Is Toshiba's HD-DVD laptop feeling blue?

Now that HD-DVD has imploded, I've been wondering what will happen to the company's highly-rated Qosmio G45, the first laptop in the U.S. to offer an HD-DVD player and recorder. HD-DVD may be a perfectly good storage format, but let's face it, not many will plunk down $3,000 or more for a notebook with a high-definition DVD drive based on a moribund format with no movies. Now comes word that Toshiba may be willing to switch sides, at least when it comes to notebooks.

According to the UK-based Pocket Lint, a Toshiba manager said at a company event that it hadn't ruled out Blu-ray and is "still reviewing the strategy for our laptop range when it comes to the next generation format."

The massive Qosmio G45 isn't for everyone, but it is an excellent desktop replacement system for watching movies or listening to music. And Toshiba hinted at CES earlier this year that it will offer a version of the Qosmio that also has a Cell Broadband Engine--the same chip that powers the PlayStation3--for more powerful video and 3D graphics processing. So it would be nice to see the big guy stick around for a while.

The G45 series is currently available in two basic configurations. The online configuration, the G45-AV680, includes a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, 2GB memory and an HD DVD-R drive for around $2,500. The retail version has a faster processor, the 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, 3GB of memory, and an HD DVD-RW drive for a little more than $3,000. Both have a 17-inch WUXGA widescreen display (1,920x1,200), Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 512MB memory, and a 320GB hard drive.