Toshiba dual-screen Libretto: A tablet or Laptop? You Decide
August 16, 2010 1 Comment
A new video shows the dual-screen Toshiba Libretto W100 strutting its stuff in uncharted territory somewhere between a tablet and a traditional clamshell laptop.
What is the Libretto W100? It’s a small 1.5-pound, 7-inch Windows 7 clamshell device that sports two capacitive LCD screens: one for viewing, one for typing. The typing screen is much like the virtual keyboard on the Apple iPad. Of course, the W100 can also function as a dual-screen tablet, which–in this respect at least–trumps the iPad.
That said, it needs to be stated up front that the Libretto W100 won’t be cheap, roughly twice the cost of the cheaper iPad models. You do get two screens, however, and two batteries and a dual-core processor. (More specs are provided on the Libretto W100 Web page.)
The haptic keyboard provides decent feedback (a slight vibration), according to the review. One of the advantages of a virtual keyboard is the ability to switch keyboard styles as needed. For example, it can also be converted into a thumb keyboard when you’re on the move, which the reviewer states is one of its handiest features.
The video reviewer also seems to reveal his preference for Intel processors over those from the ARM camp. “They canned the ARM processor and went to a full, real CPU. It’s an Intel dual-core 1.2GHz processor,” he says. That comment may raise some eyebrows (or some hairs on the neck) at the ARM camp of processor suppliers like Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. (And it should be noted that Toshiba also lists a dynabook AZ on its Japanese Web site that uses an Nvidia Tegra 250 processor.)
Generally speaking, the W100 can do pretty much what any Windows laptop can do and that includes printing, viewing Adobe Flash, and running productivity apps like Word and Excel.
And note that the reviewer says the unit gets hot. Because of this, Toshiba has put the electronics on the top, so it doesn’t “burn” your lap, in the words of the reviewer

This laptop is perfect for those that need something small and portable. The added features of the touch screen can come in handy depending on your experience.Compared to other netbooks this is identical in performance. The Intel Atom is much faster than expected. If you throw in an extra gig of memory it wouldn’t hurt.Don’t expect to much with Windows Starter. It is exactly what it says it is…. “STARTER” not all windows features will be available, the upgrade to Home Premium or above is recommended.Other programs that came with the machine are pretty cool to play with, it just depends on what you want to do with it.