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Toshiba Marks 25 Years With Latest Libretto

NEW YORK — To celebrate Toshiba’s
25th year in the notebook business
the company has updated two
of it better-known products, the Libretto
and the Portege.

On the consumer side, a limited-edition
concept product of the Libretto
mini-notebook, rolled out in the United
States in 1998, is on tap. And Toshiba’s original notebook, introduced in 1985,
has been reconceived as the R700
Portege business notebook.

The latest Libretto, the W100CT,
greatly deviates from the original two
models. It has dropped its keyboard
in favor of an additional 7-inch LCD.
The second display can either show
content like the primary screen or be
used as a virtual keyboard, said Philip
Osako, Toshiba’s product marketing
director, digital products division.

The Libretto maintains its clamshell
design with the additional display,
and the user can toggle back and
forth between using it as a keyboard
or to view content. An upcoming ereader
app will allow the Libretto to
act like a paper book, with writing filling
both screens.

Osako said that while the concept
Libretto will be available at retail in
August, the numbers will be extremely
limited. He did not say how many
would be made.

“We would not normally put something
like this up for sale, but we
thought we could get some real feedback
on the concept,” said Osako.

The original Libretto the U100 was
updated to the T1100.

While the new Portege, the R700, retains
the traditional laptop form factor
of its parent product, it is no less than
2.5 inches thinner while delivering desktop-
level performance, said Osako.

Toshiba’s T1100 notebook, the
forerunner of today’s Portege business
line, contained no hard drive;
had 256Kb of memory, expandable to
640Kb; featured a text-based screen
that was 80 characters wide; and ran
on an Intel 80C88 4.77Mhz processor.
It also had 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch
floppy drives and cost $1,899.

The latest relatives are the R700-
S1310, the R700-S1320 and the R700-
1330. Suggested retails are $999,
$1,299 and $1,599, respectively.

The base model has a 13.3-inch display,
Intel Core i3 processor, 500GB hard
drive and 4GB of memory. The top-end
model steps up to a 128GB solid-state
drive and an Intel Core i7 processor.

For the first time Toshiba has created
a Portege SKU for the consumer
market. The R707 is a spin-off of the
R700. It will sell at retail for $899 and
has the same basic specifications as
the R700-S1310.

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