14 DAY TRIAL // It’s no doubt that, by now, consumers have at least thought of or heard about the idea of a laptop or some such device that, instead of a keyboard, uses a touch panel. PC makers have been showing off such concept PCs at electronic shows for years but, so far, no working model has actually been introduced to the market. Toshiba appears determined to change this with the libretto W100, a fairly unusual 7-inch mini notebook that trades the comfort of physical keys for the ability to act as multiple types of consumer electronics.
The libretto W100, to put it bluntly, is a dual-display invention which relies completely on touch input. For one, it can easily take on the role of a dual-display e-book reader. On the other hand, one of the screens can act as a keyboard, in which case the functionality of the creation is quite similar to that of a netbook. Nevertheless, what is truly curious about the entire invention is that its insides are far from canon.
To start with, the CPU implemented, instead of being an Atom, like the ones commonly used by entry-level mobile PCs, is a ULV model, the Pentium U5400 to be exact. This component has a speed of 1.2GHz and is backed up by 2GB of RAM. Storage is provided by a solid state drive with a capacity of 62GB. The rest of the feature set is made up of a microSD slot, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a 1.02 megapixel webcam and a USB 2.0 port. All of these things are crammed inside a package that weighs either 699 grams and 819 grams.
The Toshiba libretto W100 has a battery life of either 2 hours or four hours, depending on what type of battery one selects. Finally, the product has a price tag of $1,099 and should start shipping in August.