Toshiba Libretto, Mother of All Netbooks!

Long before the ASUS EEE, MSI Wind and Acer One hit the stores, Toshiba already had its very own netbook. In 1996, the Libretto was introduced. Toshiba developed it into the latest U105/U105 series: a pretty fast, compact mini-laptop, which outruns today's netbooks by far. It even runs Vista and Windows 7 at very acceptable speeds.

With a 1.2 ghz Intel processor , 512MB - 1GB memory and a 30 - 60GB HDD, the U100/105 can be used for several tasks, like a big PDA, navigation device or just for playing your favorite MP3 files.
Even the older Libretto's are still used on a daily bases by lots of Libretto addicts. Watching movies on a 50/70 CT, or even play simple games on it, like seen on a YouTube video.

As the keyboard is very small, it takes a while to get used to the little keys. After a couple of hours typing on such a small keyboard, you get used to it. Also, because of the dimensions, Toshiba had to play around with the special keys. Unfortunately, the did not choose the right position for every key.

Another hot topic is to install all kind of operating systems on the Libretto. Not only Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista or even Windows 7, but a wide range of Linux distributions found their way to the Libretto. Especially smaller distributions like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux are used very often on the older laptops.

Although Toshiba stopped making these nice mini-laptops, there are many users around the world, who are still using them and make very useful websites about them. One of the better ones is www.librettoworld.com. With its own user form and useful blog posts, it is the place to be for Toshiba Libretto owners. Other Libretto dedicated websites are www.silverace.com/libretto and www.jethrocarr.com/index.php?cms=libretto_u100.

The biggest difference with the modern netbooks should be the cost price. The Toshiba Libretto was very expensive. The latest model, the U100/U105 series, was available for $2000. That's a whole lot more than the ASUS EEE MSI Wind or other netbooks, starting already for less than $300.

However, since the new netbook is finding its way to almost every home, prices of a used Libretto are dropping every day. The early 110 CT comes around $50-$100 on EBay. The later U105 models are harder to find, but for a reasonable $300-$500 one should be able to found one. That's about the price of a modern netbook.