• Recommend:
• 0 Comments

Toshiba Subnotebook Headed to U.S.

Tiny Libretto uses 75-MHz Pentium and 6.1-inch screen.

By Rob Guth, PCWorld   

U.S. sales of the notebook, which is now available in Japan, are delayed because of a shortage of small form-factor active-matrix screens. That shortfall is expected to stall the companys sales plans for six months, a Toshiba official said in an interview today.

Six months from now, TFT LCD production is likely to be at a level that can support sales of the 850-gram Libretto notebook in both the U.S. and Japan, according to Tetsuya Mizoguchi, vice president, group executive at the Tokyo-based company.

Mizoguchi did not disclose details on the U.S. version but said the unit may sport features not found on its Japanese cousin, such as a larger keyboard. Mizoguchi emphasized that even as the unit exists today, there is strong interest among U.S. users.

That flies in the face of what many analysts have maintained, that miniature notebooks are not currently of interest to the U.S. market.

To date, U.S. PC users have rejected most PCs smaller than A4 file size. Many vendors, including IBM, have tried to sell tiny PCs in this country but have all failed to garner any interest from discriminating users here, analysts said.

But Toshiba, the world%squots leading maker of notebooks, seems to be on the right track with the Pentium-based Libretto, which offers many of the software and performance features of full-blown notebooks but not the weight and size.

Now in its third generation, the Libretto houses a 16-million color 6.1-inch TFT LCD screen that has a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels.

Based on a 75-MHz Pentium, the unit measures 210 by 115 by 34 millimeters, ships with 16MB of RAM and an 810MB hard drive. In addition to a slimmed-down version of Windows 95, the PC ships with Microsoft%squots Word, Excel, and Internet Explorer as well as Lotus Organizer.

The current Tokyo street price with software is about 218,000 yen or $1800, and 198,000 yen without.