Toshiba Sleep-and-Charge USB ports - a true stroke of innovative genius!

So, more and more gadgets that people acquire are either USB powered, coming with USB chargers or have USB chargers available for them. So why is it that up until now another common portable device that could charge these items is constantly put to waste when it’s off? That’s right, Toshiba has had a true stroke of genius and because of it your Notebook will soon be able to act as a USB charging station regardless of whether it’s on, off, or in sleep/hibernation modes.

Sure, it may not sound that innovative in the scope of things, but that’s what makes it so genius is because no one else thought of it before. It will first arrive on 4 of Toshiba’s notebooks, the Satellite U400, M300, A300, and P300. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that the notebook must be plugged in, you can’t do this off of battery power, which is probably for the best anyways.

All of the newly redesigned notebooks are RoHS compatible making them very environmentally friendly. Furthermore, since your laptop is sucking power all the time when its plugged in whether its on or off or fully charged, and this is just putting that fact to use, you can kind of view this as being more environmentally friendly instead of occupying another outlet just to charge your iPod.

[via Toshiba]