Having spent some time with a pre-production version of the Libretto W100, there’s plenty we like about the ultraportable but still some gaping holes that are easy to identify. Battery life and, a decent amount of RAM aside, the limited potency of the CULV processor mean the W100 is nowhere near an all-day device nor a serious Kindle or iPad rival for long periods of ereading. We’re not convinced by the size, either; at around the same dimensions as a hard-back book, you’ll need a big pocket in order to carry the W100 bag-free. The touchscreens don’t support multitouch, as far as we could tell, and needed calibrating since they were particularly picky about how exactly you tapped; more worrying, though, was a UI that proved less than intuitive at times.
For instance, there’s a dedicated keyboard button to the left of the lower display and a Home button to the right, with the latter supposed to automatically open up LifeSpace when in Windows mode. However it seemed inconsistent in its action, and often we were left trying to figure out the various unlabelled icons running along the bottom of the lower display. Outside of Toshiba’s custom apps, of course, you’re at the mercy of what support – or lack of – for touchscreen use that Microsoft or third-party developers have coded into their software.