The first laptop to use Toshiba's SpursEngine multimedia co-processor is coming in July.

The SpursEngine is derived from the Cell chip that runs the PlayStation 3. It contains four of the multimedia processing cores from the Cell, which makes it perfect for handling data-heavy multimedia tasks that ordinarily the PC's processor cannot handle.

On the new laptops, the Qosmio G50 and F40, that means a few neat tricks.

Among them is upscaling of video, transcoding of digital TV to more efficient MPEG4 in realtime to cut down on disk storage space and faster burning of video disks.

A novel feature is face navigation. Faces that appear in video are recognized and displayed as thumbnails to create a visual index of the video. It's then easy to find a desired scene and watch it with a double click.

The computer can also analyze and display the volume or the clip across its entire length so, for example, excitement in a sports event can be more easily found.

The laptop also has hand gesture control. When enabled the camera above the display monitors the user's hands and through gestures the PC can be controled. The system works on the media player and PowerPoint functions and means, for example, videos can be stopped and started or slide shows contolled with a few waves of the hand. Raise your thumb for a mouse click.

The SpursEngine will just be used for such multimedia tasks and otherwise will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The multimedia machine will hit Japan in late July with prices from YEN 290,000, that's about US$2,700, and follow in other markets later in the year. Despite being based on the Cell processor, the inclusion of the SpursEngine doesn't mean you'll be able to play PS3 games on the machine -- they are restricted to the console.

In Tokyo this is Martyn Williams, IDG News Service.