Do Toshiba laptops still exist?

I had to check the date on the press release was 2 April rather than 1 April, but this is no joke: Toshiba has rebranded as Dynabook. To be precise, what were Toshiba laptops will in the future be Dynabook laptops.

If you need any help understanding this shift, I urge you, please, to watch this video:

It’s not short on hyperbole. My favourite line is “we live and breathe our brand… we turn imagination into reality with quality, reliability and security at our core”. Just to hammer it home, there’s a lovely image of a white, planet-like sphere representing that core, with swishy lines all around it.

Who is Dynabook?

But enough fun, because Dynabook is a serious name change. It stems from the fact that Sharp bought 80.1% of Toshiba Client Solutions (essentially Toshiba’s laptop business) in October last year. With Toshiba no longer the primary owner, it made sense to change the company name.

So why Dynabook? Because it harks back to Toshiba’s first notebook computer, the Dynabook J-3100 SS001, launched in 1989. I guess we should all be grateful Sharp decided not to opt for SS001 as the new brand.

What does this change mean for the British customer? Simply that the Toshiba brand will fade from usage, with new laptops being released under the Dynabook brand, much like IBM became Lenovo.

Indeed, PC World has already started selling Dynabooks. Confusingly, though, they’re called Toshiba Dynabooks. PC World clearly didn’t get the memo…

So we can expect to see Dynabook Portégé laptops and Dynabook Satellite Pro machines in the coming months. As ever with such transitions, though, it will be a slow burn. Don’t expect to see the Toshiba brand disappear from your local PC World for a while.

But do keep on enjoying that video.

UPDATE Paul Ockenden has pointed out that this is the real Dynabook. Although never built, Xerox did create a prototype of Alan Kay’s vision of a “personal computer for children of all ages”.

Below, hear Alan talking about how he came up with the idea and showing a cardboard mock-up of the world’s first true Dynabook.

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