Toshiba Libretto W105

Toshiba Libretto W105

Toshiba have come out with their most innovative and daring product yet – the Toshiba Libretto W105. Designed and produced as an experiment for their 25th anniversary in mobile computing and design, the gadget can only be described as next gen. The Toshiba Libretto W105 is shockingly bold, for a netbook, because of its dual touch screens. The first of its kind designed and produced for market (albeit for a limited time), the W105 is reminiscent of all those concept and prototype gadgets seen in sci-fi magazines but which never make it into production. One little difference though; this one actually made it into the market. Now that the cat is out of the bag, let’s delve a bit deeper into the specs.
The black chassis of the Toshiba Libretto W105 is book shaped and covers the dual touch screens nicely. Rather sturdy and blockish, the netbook doesn’t say much for aerodynamic design. The design is nevertheless functional and practical. The dual touch screens measure a not too exciting 7.95 inches but are surprisingly responsive.
The system runs on Windows 7 Home Premium, something that is surprising especially due to the dual screen design. The Toshiba Libretto W105 seems to have an upper hand against other netbooks because it’s a non-Atom processor running on 1.2GHz Intel Pentium U5400 specs. RAM maxes out at 2GB. Not built for direct competition with any other netbook, the Toshiba Libretto W105 comes off rather far off in terms of ease of use.
Take for example the Windows 7 Home Premium OS. The Toshiba Libretto W105 makes simple tasks such as selecting action commands to highlighting addresses in the address tab rather laborious. This may be because Windows 7 was not designed for touch screen capabilities, but that said, the netbook still does not make the task any easier. The Toshiba Libretto W105 has a 62GB SSD hard drive, which is consistent with most netbooks.
This netbook that looks like a tablet but behaves like a palm top is perhaps more of a collector’s item than a solid work netbook. The best parts about it are of course the innovative dual touch pads. As far as that is concerned, the guys at Toshiba have it hands down. However, in real world computing, everything is measured against everything else, and judged as such.
In this case, when the Toshiba Libretto W105 is pitted against the Apple iPad or Sony VAIO P, you find a number of pitfalls in the Toshiba touch pad. For instance, the Apple iPad offers remarkable touch capabilities such as flipping web pages with the flick of a finger or easy command recognition in a crowded page.
The other aspect that militates against the Toshiba Libretto W105 is the apparent lack of time and effort put into the design and ease of use of the Libretto. Numerous small buttons and interface shuffling means you need a serious learning curve in order to master the workings of this gadget.
However, the fact that the Toshiba Libretto W105 runs on a non-Atom processor and actually runs Windows 7 Home Premium rather smoothly puts it ahead of many Atom-based netbooks.
The Toshiba Libretto W105 is perhaps every collector’s or geek’s dream concept machine; a taste of the future if you may. Well, for a price tag of $1,000, the Toshiba Libretto W105 is definitely a decently priced trip into the future of touch screen computing.
Gadget review,Gadget reviews and prices, free download software , and tech news