Portégé R700 and the Libretto W100: Must-sees from Toshiba

Toshiba began making portable computers back in the mid-1980s. Back then, as a student at the University of Hawaii, I saw fellow students from Indonesia buying laptops made by Toshiba. The first laptop from IBM came a little later to the computer store at the student center.

It is funny to think how technology has evolved in the last 25 years. The first Toshiba laptop was quite hefty. Even the term “laptop” did not accurately describe the weight that our laps would have to sustain if we wanted to take notes during a lecture.

Most laptops from the period came with one or two 3.5-inch floppy diskettes drives, which were still an innovation. A hard disk was too expensive for most students. Without a hard disk, my compatriots had to install DOS and word-processing applications — usually WordStar — using floppy disks.

I never used a Toshiba laptop during my student days. I had a desktop IBM PS/2 instead. There was a simple reason for my choice. The monochrome, dual-scan LCD screen used by laptops was too small and fuzzy for my eyes. Compare those features — which were then considered revolutionary — with what we have today and you will be awed.

Less than two weeks ago, the Computer System Division of Toshiba Singapore celebrated the silver anniversary of Toshiba notebooks at an event at Plaza Indonesia in Jakarta. Two products were featured: The Portégé R700 and the Libretto W100.

Every notebook vendor has a thin and light line for extra-mobile computer users. Acer, for example, has its TimeLine series. Lenovo has the ThinkPad X-series. ASUS, Dell, HP and others offer similar models as well. Currently, among the Toshiba lines, the Portégé R700 series laptops are the latest ultra-light models. They are less than 2 centimeters thick and weigh 1.39 kilograms and up, depending on configuration.

Toshiba said that the R700 has up to 8.5 hours of battery life yet is propelled by an Intel Core i processor. The versions offered in Indonesia have Core i3 and Core i5 processors.

These are not the ultra-low voltage (ULV) processors typically used by thin and light notebooks. Toshiba uses the airflow cooling technology that it developed with Intel to make it possible to place a full-voltage processor in a very slim notebook.

Most 13.3-inch screen laptops must sacrifice optical disk drives (ODD). Another amazing feat by Toshiba is that this model, which also has a 13.3 inch screen, comes with a built-in ODD.

The R700 still has no USB 3.0 port, but its docking station does. It still has plenty of ports though, including two USB 2.0, a USB 2.0 and eSATA combo, a VGA-out and HDMI ports and gigabit Ethernet.

The Wi-Fi system already supports the 802.11n standard.

More interesting is the Libretto W100. I still remember the first Libretto, which appeared in 1996. It was a handheld computer with very limited screen real estate.

This time around, Toshiba has gotten rid of the hardware keyboard altogether. In its place, they put a second screen, so it looks like a two-sided slate. Both screens have touch capability and are 7 inches wide. Some people say that the W100 is Toshiba’s answer to Apple’s iPad, although I do not completely agree with them.

This Libretto runs Windows 7. We can use the entire screen to display one application window, or we can open a PowerPoint presentation on the top screen and a Word document on the bottom screen.

To type, we need to call up the virtual keyboard. We can configure the screen keyboard in different ways.

There is also haptic feedback that tells us every time a finger touch is registered.

Toshiba has also thrown in three utilities to make use of the W100 weasier. First, there is the Bulletin Board, which displays important information such as projects, tasks and notes. It replaces the usual Windows Desktop with something that is smarter.

Second, the Windows Explorer function is handled by a utility called ReelTime, which previews documents, photos and videos. The alt-tab key combination, which is extremely useful when we multitask, is now achievable with a custom file browser. Two buttons below the lower screen call up the screen keyboard and the Bulletin Board, respectively.

Unlike the Portégé, the Libretto W100 does not run on Intel Core i processors. The brains are
an Intel Pentium processor with dual-core technology. It has 2GB of ultrafast DDR3 memory. It does
not use a hard disk either. As we would expect, it has a 62GB solid state drive.

Today, Toshiba offers several lines of notebooks. These are the media-centric QOSMIO, the consumer Satellite and Satellite Pro, the enterprise-targeted Tecra, the Portégé and the Libretto. Unfortunately, I have been told that it would be almost impossible for me to get a chance for a hands-on review of the Portégé or Libretto, because they are in a very limited supply.

According to Wong Lih Jiu, general manager of Toshiba’s Computer Systems Division, only one thousand units of the Libretto W100 will be sold in Asia.

A nice marketing tactic, isn’t it? Still, it is worth looking at if you are a hardcore gadget freak.