Toshiba Libretto Review
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This is a video review by Mike Agerbo. He gives a pretty comprehensive review of the Toshba Libretto! Windows 7 is a breeze on the Libertto. Watch and Enjoy!
This post is sponsored by Fat32 Online.
The Toshiba Libretto W105 is a napkin-sketched concept unexpectedly brought to life. It’s the kind of gadget that’s mused about in tech blog comment sections: “What if they made a tablet with–wait for it–two screens? How awesome would that be?” Of course, nobody really expects a major company to produce such a weird, ballsy device, except maybe for a limited demo at a convention, never to be seen again. But Toshiba went ahead and actually did it.
The two-screen concept isn’t exactly a new one. Hardcore gadget nerds will lament the lost Microsoft Courier, a dramatically innovative two-screened tablet with an aesthetic as inspired by Moleskine as the iPhone. The Courier was cancelled soon after it was unearthed, for unclear reasons. Other companies, notably Acer and Asus, have offered concepts or prototypes, and then there’s the massive textbook-replacement Kno (two 14-inch screens!), which should be released…eventually. One low-budget company released a dual-screen device in which one screen was e-ink, the other an Android tablet, though nobody that used it seemed to like either side very much.
This is all a very long-winded way to lead up to the night I took the Libretto home and introduced it to my roommate. I, a gadget nerd, was incredibly excited about it. I played with it for an hour or so, noting its strengths and weaknesses with a critical eye but loving the little oddball–it surprised me so much simply by existing, I never really got over the “oooh shiny!” phase. Then I passed it to my roommate, who has proven impressively capable of dealing with the litany of electronic nonsense that litters our apartment, and went to the bodega across the street for some milk. When I came back, the Libretto was on our coffee table, with the addition of a note my roommate had written with the tablet’s custom note-taking software:
Toshiba Libretto W105: Not for Everyone: Not everyone is as charmed by the Libretto as I was. Dan Bracaglia
She’s not entirely wrong. The Libretto can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s a tablet or a netbook, and taking the middle road hurts its use as either. Windows 7 is, as we know very well by now, a poor choice for a tablet operating system, one which hurts the Libretto’s practical use as a tablet. As a netbook, the second touchscreen becomes a very cool hindrance, rather than a help, and the 7-inch screen size is really too small for a netbook. And, yes, the Libretto doesn’t take advantage of the fact that it can be held and used like a tiny book–there’s no way to read ebooks the way you’d want to, one page on each screen.
Yet all that night, I used it. With my MacBook Pro sitting on my desk, closed and forlorn, I used it. I forced it to behave the way I wanted, downloading an obscure web browser meant for home theater PCs (Kylo) for its large, finger-friendly buttons. I used a flashy 3D desktop called BumpTop to get some use, any use, out of the bottom screen. I dug through menus to increase the size of the taskbar and menu bars. I hunched, ogre-like, over the two tiny screens sitting on my lap. I coerced, pleaded, and tricked it into usability–and I’m glad I did.
I did these things because the Libretto is gloriously, irrevocably, inevitably unique, and fun. It is a limited-edition device, as well it should be, priced at a frankly ridiculous $1,100. But! If you see this thing in the wild, a demo unit on a dusty Best Buy endcap or on the coffee table of an undiscerning and highly moneyed gadget nerd, pick it up. Play with it. For five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, it is gleefully fun, strikingly audacious. It is a Best of What’s New winner for its sheer contrariness. It is absolutely futuristic–one of the most exciting gadgets I’ve picked up all year.
-The Gadget Guy
Toshiba today sold out of its current, if not only, US run of the Libretto W100. The dual-screen tablet is now listed at its exclusive Amazon home as “currently unavailable” and doesn’t have any estimated time for when it would return to stock. It had only been on sale for two days.
The W100 was pitched as a limited edition from the start and was considered a design exercise showing what an all-touch Windows 7 device could do. It uses one of its seven-inch touchscreens for the keyboard and certain custom apps, and on its side can be used like an e-book reader.
At $1,100, the system was a premium model with a 1.2GHz Pentium, 2GB of RAM and a 62GB solid-state drive.
This post was found on a message board. A guy doing real work with a premo set up.
Here is the post:
So as I was working in Excel 2010 today doing Pivot Tables, I had my Libretto in eBook mode with my Excel 2010:The Missing Manual open for reference and I was working on my HP Slate with Excel, it dawned on me…”I have two of the coolest and sexiest devices next to each other doing real work…”
Setup – Libretto is on a Tablet Stand (same one referenced in the accessories thread), HP Slate Docked with desktop extended to a 1080p LG Monitor with the MS Wireless Entertainment Keyboard 7000 and Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. And yes that is a Zune in a Zune Dock in the background….sorry I don’t do any Apple
Sponsored by the Nintendo 3DS Store.
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Question: My daughter was given one Toshiba Libretto W100. Unfortunately she forgot the Password. How can I start the PC ?
Answer: There is nothing that you can do other than contact Toshiba and prove that you own it and they will have you take it or send it in. They have to reset it and the reason is that laptop computers are such an easily stolen item that they make the password XXXXX proprietary and difficult. You may see things posted about taking out the battery from the cmos OR backdoor passwords and jumpers. None of these work anymore.