Toshiba Libretto W100 review: First look

Tapping maximise and close buttons on a screen this size is difficult so when you tap on the title bar of any window a full-screen overlay pops up with buttons to minimise, maximise, close or move windows from screen to screen.

Turn the W100 sideways and the screens automatically rotate. At the moment this only works if you turn the screen in one direction but this will probably change. Although Toshiba calls this book mode and suggests it will be good for reading, ebook reader apps like the Kindle software don't give you facing pages. Documents and web pages do fit the portrait orientation well though.

Despite the small size, this isn't a netbook. Rather than an Atom processor it has a mobile Pentium U5400 processor and 2G of RAM, plus a 62GB SSD that keeps the system feeling fast. This means you can work with any application that you're comfortable using on this size of screen.

To save space there's only one USB port and a microSD slot. You won't find Ethernet here and 3G is optional.

Mary Branscombe

Mary is a freelance business technology journalist who has written for the likes of ITPro, CIO, ZDNet, TechRepublic, The New Stack, The Register, and many other online titles, as well as national publications like the Guardian and Financial Times. She has also held editor positions at AOL’s online technology channel, PC Plus, IT Expert, and Program Now. In her career spanning more than three decades, the Oxford University-educated journalist has seen and covered the development of the technology industry through many of its most significant stages.

Mary has experience in almost all areas of technology but specialises in all things Microsoft and has written two books on Windows 8. She also has extensive expertise in consumer hardware and cloud services - mobile phones to mainframes. Aside from reporting on the latest technology news and trends, and developing whitepapers for a range of industry clients, Mary also writes short technology mysteries and publishes them through Amazon.