Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/toshiba_libretto_w100/
Toshiba intros dual-screen, keyboard-less netbook
Mini laptop meets Nintendo DS
Posted in Tablets, 21st June 2010 09:05 GMT
Free whitepaper – Hands on with Hyper-V 3.0 and virtual machine movement
Hands On Toshiba thinks it has trumped the Apple iPad with a compact micro laptop that comes across as the mutant offspring of a netbook and a Nintendo DS.
The launch also sees the revival of Toshiba's long ignored palmtop PC brand: Libretto [1].
So, we have the Libretto W100, a clamshell mini machine sporting not one 7in, 1024 x 600 touchscreen but two, one where the keyboard usually goes.
The 840g gadget runs Windows 7 on a Pentium U5400 [2], an ultra-low voltage dual-core part running at 1.2GHz. It has 2GB of 1066MHz DDR 3 memory and a 62GB SSD.
Toshiba's notion is that you can use the W100 as a netbook-style gadget - the lower touchscreen can present a range of virtual keyboards, including two different Qwerty layouts - one with big keys, one with small - numbers and a split-down-the-middle job for thumb typing.
The keyboard has haptic feedback, but on the sample unit I tried, it was weak and made little difference.
Get rid of the keyboard and open out the W100 to its fullest, flat extent and you have a sort of iPad wannabe spoiled only by the inch-thick hinge unit running across the middle. Rotate it through 90°, however, and you do have a nice book-style e-book reader.
The W100's dimensions a 202mm wide by 246mm, with the top and bottom sections both 123mm. The problem is the device's thickness - Toshiba cannily didn't say what this measurement is, but it's well over an inch.
This is a very chunk palmtop. That, and the two small screens in place of a single, big, tablet-sized one, gives the W100 as anachronistic feel, the sort of thing OQO [3] or FlipStart [4] might have come up with five years ago - and priced well beyond what mere mortals can afford, no doubt.
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Toshiba [5] wouldn't say how much the W100 will cost when it goes on sale next month. ®