Meet Toshiba's Protégé R400, the First Laptop with Built-in WUSB

The future of Wireless USB is here sooner than we expected thanks to Toshiba's Protégé R400, the first notebook computer with built in Wireless USB. The crèmè de la crèmè of portable computing, this laptop offers more features than we could ever hope to fit into one paragraph, so you're just going to have to click through the jump to read all the juicy bits.

At it's base, the R400 is built around a Core Duo U2500 processor clocked at 1.2GHz with an Intel 945GM Express chipset to back it up. Video is provided by the GMA950 graphics core that's seen heavy use lately in the Intel Macintoshes, effectively a power-efficient solution that's good for high definition video and standard desktop use, but utterly useless for any games past the Quake III era. Documents are kept on the 80GB 4200RPM drive, and 2GB of memory is provided standard (upgradeable to 4GB if you swap both the chips).

In terms of Wireless, Toshiba built no less than 7 antennas into the R400, offering 802.11A/B/G WiFi, Wireless USB based on WiQuest's reference design that features diversity antennas, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, and EV-DO wireless internet by Verizon. The Wireless USB will come in especially handy in Q2 of this year when Toshiba launches their wireless docking station that instantly connects you to everything from speakers to video, either automatically, manually, or by pop-up notification. (No MSRP is set on this yet.) Another first for this laptop is the use of Windows Vista's Active Notifications, allowing travelers to quickly check their latest emails and Outlook calendar updates on tiny LCD embedded on the front of the R400.

The Protégé R400's 12.1" screen is also quite impressive, utilizing an array of 42 LEDs for backlighting as opposed to your typical CCFL backlighting, allowing for a vivid display in direct sunlight that offers better battery life and even lighting. What's more, the LCD is able to flip around to become a touch screen for tablet computing, and features a unique hinge that's tension alone holds the display open and shut with no mechanical latch.