Britta Wuelfing

Toshiba announced two new notebooks with the Sun OpenSolaris platform pre-installed, the 12" Portégé R600 and the 14" Tecra M10. The models are the result of a strategic partnership between Toshiba and Sun Microsystems that began in December 2008. Next to OpenSolaris 2008.11, applications on the notebooks include Sun's own VirtualBox, OpenOffice 3.0, a web stack including MySQL and the Apache Web Server, and Adobe Flash Player. Sun's developer tools are also included: Glassfish V2, Java SE Development Kit, NetBeans and Studio Express. Both notebooks come with Intel Core2 Duo processors, with speeds ranging from 1.4 to 2.53 Gigahertz. The "ultraportable" Portégé R600 has a 160-GByte hard drive, while the Tecra M10 can be configured with up to 320 GBytes.

The ultra-mobile 12" notebook from Toshiba is available now in the U.S. pre-installed with OpenSolaris.

The notebooks are currently available in the U.S. at the OpenSolaris website. Prices for the 14" model begin at $1,099. The site also includes an installation and pre-installed recovery guide. The price includes one full year of support from Sun and a three-year warranty. May should bring availability in Britain and other countries should follow. The current ToshibaDirect price listings are for Windows, although the OpenSolaris version prices should be identical.