Honey, have you seen my laptop? Jørgen Sundgot makes a frantic bid at retrieving Toshiba's miniscule libretto U100 ultraportable in time for his deadline. Maybe it's in the other pocket?
Review summary of the Toshiba libretto U100:
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 As impressive as the Toshiba libretto U100 is from a technological point of view, an admittedly superb screen and a cramped keyboard prevent the exploitation of its full potential. Good performance, better battery life and excellent connectivity make the U100 a solid choice for light productivity work on the go, whilst the whopping 60 GB hard drive alleviates the need for lugging its dock to play DVDs for entertainment - but prospective buyers should keep in mind the extent to which they will be able to use the features for which they pay. Release: August 2005. Price: $2000.
Pros: Small size; good battery life; excellent connectivity; copious storage; fingerprint reader
Cons: Cramped keyboard; VGA out requires dongle; screen teeters on the brink of usability
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Full Toshiba libretto U100 Review:
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Get ready for a study in miniaturization. Likely designed to allow a glimpse into our culture by the severely shrunken descendants of mankind one million years into the future, Toshiba's libretto U100 is nothing less than a stunning feat of engineering - which, in fact, may have benefited from a little more focus on usability and a little less on technical prowess. Still, there's no denying that this is an impressive piece of hardware.
Oh, it's an itsy bitsy teenie weenie...
Alright, we admit it: we thought the Fujitsu Siemens LifeBook P1510 was small, but dear Lord - the U100 verges on microscopic. At 210 x 165 x 33 mm and 0.98 KG, it's an ultraportable in the true sense of the word - but alas, its impressively small size also places severe constraints on the otherwise brilliant glossy display of the unit, which is kept at 7.2 inches with a stunning WXGA resolution of 1,280 x 768 pixels.
With a standard DPI setting in Windows XP, the U100 is quite simply unusable; crank it up to 120 DPI, and it manages to stay right on the verge for use whilst placed on ones lap. The 73%-size keyboard is also affected by the lack of real estate, and, although offering good tactile and audible feedback, is equipped with rectangular keys which easily cut ones input rate in half. Fortunately, a delightfully precise and responsive trackpoint wedged between mouse buttons and placed just below the keyboard balances this impression somewhat.
Surprisingly, the U100 also manages to cram a fingerprint reader in adjacent to the navigational array for added security, while other external tidbits include a handy dedicated wireless on/off switch; a volume scroll wheel; and a front-mounted row of unintrusive LED indicators.
What lurks beneath
Powered as it is by an Intel Pentium M 753 processor running at 1.2 GHz, the libretto U100 is no screamer - and certainly not when one considers that its maximum amount of RAM is 1 GB. Still, this is quite sufficient for productivity applications, and the integrated graphics chipset from Intel also propels graphics with reasonable prowess. What's truly impressive, however, is the inclusion of a shock-mounted 60 GB hard drive with drop detection spinning at 4,200 RPM; a tad sluggish, yet distinctly spacious for a laptop this size.
A bundled dock further offers up a DVD+/-RW optical drive, and also contains a row of media control buttons - but alas, no added connectivity options.
Even sans-dock, however, the U100's connectivity setup remains resoundingly comprehensive with Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR on board, as well as dual USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, Ethernet and a 56K V.90 modem. Furthermore, SD/MMC and PCMCIA Type II expansion slots are also in place, and VGA out is also possible - although disappointingly, this requires a dongle of the sort that's easy to misplace. Also, it should be noted that we've seen better wireless signal reception that what the U100 offers, although it remains very good.
Lastly on the note of specifications, a rather considerable battery pokes out from the back of the U100 to take some of the edge off its rather boxy design - and for that, we're quite grateful as it also chalks up a battery life in the range of three hours, which is very solid.
There's a reason they call it the task bar
Running Windows XP Professional edition, the libretto U100 performs with aplomb when running the usual gamut of productivity applications - which is likely the extent to which anyone would want to push this laptop. Screen and keyboard size limitations simply present too great obstacles in the pursuit of conducting serious work, rendering light e-mail work, web browsing and PowerPoint presentations some of its most likely uses.
As for third party applications, the libretto U100 is rather sparsely equipped with Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 on tap alongside media-oriented applications including Sonic RecordNow!, InterVideo WinDVD for DVD playback and, from the same company, WinDVD Creator 2 Platinum - although whether anyone would want to author DVDs on the U100 is highly doubtful.
Also, we have to say we're somewhat bewildered as to Toshiba's reasoning behind cramming enough applications into the system tray to take up more than one third of the task bar.
Availability
The Toshiba libretto U100 is available in both Europe and the US at the time of press, starting at €1,825 EUR and $2,000 USD, respectively. Unlike the European version on review here, the US version does not come bundled with the libretto DVD dock.
Price and availability
The Toshiba libretto U100 will start selling for $2000 () in August 2005.
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