Every so often I come across a device so ahead of it's time that I just have to get one. This was one such case.
The Toshiba Libretto range was a series of sub notebooks released in the late 1990s. These were made to compete in the PDA
and sub notebook market. The Libretto falls somewhere in the middle. With it's small size you may expect this to be running
some kind of mobile operating system like Windows CE. But the real killer feature of these notebooks was that they could run
a fully featured version of Windows 95 (or any other 90s operating system of choice).
| That sounds cool. What are the specs like? |  |
The machine I have is the Libretto 70ct. This model features a 120mhz Pentium MMX CPU and 32MB of RAM. A repectable setup for
a machine of the era. I half expected that the hardware tradeoffs would lead to slower performance but its about as responsive as
you would expect any laptop of this era to be. The 640x480 active matrix LCD panel is great for the late 1990s. Certainly a
lot better than the passive matrix panels of other laptops in Toshiba's range. No ghosting or washed out colours.
Everything looks pretty much perfect.
| Ahh cool. A lot like most laptops of the time. But how do you control such a small computer? | |
The user input side of things is where the compromises start to become a little more noticable. The tiny keyboard, even with my small
fingers starts to become very cramped after a short period of time. Definitly not something you want to be writing essays on. The mouse
input is contolled by a nub on the right hand side of the screen and two buttons on the back. Although this might seem odd, it's perfectly
useable. Especially if you have experience with other track-point style mice. Also on the right hand side is a single mono speaker. Although
this does have fully Sound Blaster Pro compatible sound, you're not going to be filling the room with Doom music any time soon.| And how did you get everything working? It's quite old so it must have been difficult. | |
Now comes the fun part. When I recieved this machine it had an install of Windows 95, however, there were no proper drivers
installed. Normally this would be a simple matter of putting the files on a floppy disk or CD-ROM. Sadly mine did not
come with the CD-ROM or Floppy drive that plugs into the PCMCIA expansion slot, nor did I have a CF card to PCMCIA adapter handy. My method
was to download the drivers required and send them over serial using Hyperterm. Not something I recommend to anyone.
Overall, this thing makes me squeak with joy. Its so much fun to have a DOS compatible PC in something the size of a small book...
perfect for little rodents like me | I guess Toshiba thought of you when they made this. For your strange skinny little rat hands | |
|
Maybe Bose should make some headphones to fit those giant ears of yours. |
| So mean ... |  |