Toshiba Libretto
I first saw a Toshiba Libretto 20 in August of 1996, and knew I had to have
one to replace my aging Toshiba T4600 laptop. At that time Toshbia did not
offer the Libretto in the US market. In the spring of 1997, T-Zone
opened a store in Sunnyvale, and offered the Japanese Libretto 50 for sale.
Barely larger than a VHS tape, and weighing less than 2 pounds,
the Libretto 50 has:
- Pentium 75
- 16M of EDO DRAM (expandable to 32M)
- 810M hard disk
- 6.1 inch active matrix color LCD (640x480, up to 16 million colors)
- SoundBlaster Pro compatible 16 bit stereo sound (output only)
- one PCMCIA slot
- port replicator with 1 serial, 1 parallel, and one VGA port
By August 1998, the Libretto 50 was long since obsolete, and the newer
Libretto 70 and 100 were widely available. I considered upgrading to
the 100, which offered a wider display. I was using my 50 all the time,
and didn't know how I ever got by without it.
However, in late 2000 my Libretto 50 broke. It started crashing
frequently, and could only be used after both removing the batteries and
flexing the unit slightly. Apparently a solder joint or PCB trace
developed an intermittent fault. Rather than getting it repaired, I
ended up replacing it with an IBM ThinkPad 240. The ThinkPad 240 is
still pretty small compared to mainstream portables, but is much larger
than the Libretto. I found the 800x600 display to be a big improvement
over the 640x480 of the Libretto, but due to the larger size and weight
I do not carry the ThinkPad around all the time like the Libretto.
Libretto resources on the web:
A few other resources used to be available, but have either disappeared or moved:
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Last updated February 24, 2002
Copyright 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002 Eric Smith
eric@brouhaha.com
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