There's been plenty of buzz for the high-concept Toshiba Libretto W100 series since it was first announced in June 2010. This dual-touch-screen minilaptop is a limited-release showpiece designed by Toshiba to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary in the mobile computing business, and is best seen as an experiment that pushes the boundaries between laptops, tablets, and portable media players.
Toshiba Libretto W105-L251
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Despite the far-out thinking behind it, the Libretto worked in practice better than we expected in some areas, including certain kinds of media playback and general Web surfing. That was especially surprising, as the system is running Windows 7 Home Premium over two simultaneous displays, all from a 1.2GHz Intel Pentium U5400 CPU and 2GB of RAM. Our configuration (the only one currently available, according to Toshiba's Web site) is called the W105-L251 and sells for $1,099.
Though it certainly can't compete against full-size laptops in raw performance, the system's capability to run basic Windows tasks was impressive (given our low initial expectations). For a largely experimental showpiece that Toshiba says was not intended for wide-scale consumption, the Libretto at least partially delivers on its promise, and is--more importantly--often fun to use. Still, at the end of the day, given its high price and limited availability, this is really more of an executive toy than anything else, especially as it doesn't fully replace any other gadget in your tech arsenal.