14 DAY TRIAL // Some years back, ultra-thin laptops, powered by ULV (ultra low voltage) CPUs, mostly covered the entire ultraportable market. After that, netbooks came along and, with their low prices and small form factor, almost drove the former out of business. This was owed to the fact that ULV chips, while very efficient, aren't very powerful, which is quite problematic for a product category whose thinness implies a price premium. Fortunately, manufacturing processes have gotten smaller since then and, with them, performance has risen as well.
Intel now has Core Series ULV processors, one of which is the Core i3-300UM. This chip has made its way into the Toshiba Satellite T230, an ultra-thin laptop more than eager to put its two 1.2GHz cores and HyperThreading to the test. This machine also boasts up to 4GB of DDR3 and up to 500GB of HDD storage space. Furthermore, the mobile computer integrates Bluetooth, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB combo port with Sleep and Charge, a multi-card reader, a webcam and an HDMI output.
In addition to the Satellite T230, Toshiba is also gearing up to unleash the T210. As its name suggests, this is a less mighty sibling of the T230. It uses the Pentium U5400 processor, has 'only' 3GB of DDR3 RAM, a 250GB hard disk and mostly identical connectivity and I/O options. The other difference between the devices is that the T210 has a metallic red finish, whereas the T230 is colored black.
It should probably be noted that both the Toshiba Satellite T230 and the Satellite T210 will come pre-loaded with the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. Unfortunately, there is, at this time, no information on the exact pricing scheme. All is not lost though, as both models should officially start shipping sometime in July, in the UK at least, which means that the wait for some actual price tags won't be too long.