We all know that the netbook market is flooded by a plethora of companies and that hundreds of companies with their products are actually making it difficult for us to judge the true elegance hidden in the netbooks. I have handled a lot of those which included Acer Aspire, MSI Wind, HP 2133 Mini-note and more but what I expected out of Toshiba’s debut product has nowhere met the expectations that I had. Here is what I found in the Toshiba NB100 and I will surely try to set the correct expectations along with the review.

I cannot deny the fact that in the world of laptops, Toshiba is considered to be the “GURU”. However, the hurried “me too” attitude of the Toshiba NB100 netbook has left behind a trailing dissatisfaction in me but the truth is that it could have been a better and rather one of the finest in this category if Toshiba had put in a lot more effort than it actually did.

With a bog standard blueprint which includes 120 GB HDD, 1GB RAM, Atom N270 processor, three USB ports, webcam, memory card reader, Bluetooth, 802.11g WiFi and bla, bla, bla, it was expected that the Toshiba NB100 would have been the finest in its class but alas, it is not!

Design and Look

The old fashioned design with the chunky black plastic chassis having a silver plastic trim just around the edges gives it a look of 1980’s. This is essentially a disappointing factor but the only relief is the glossy lid. It is coated with shiny black is flecked with sapphire blue to give a gorgeous look to the lid! Lifting the lid, I was left with amazement! How can things get worse? The keyboard is the worst in 8.9 inch netbook family and this is because the keys are too small and are better said to be perfect for a 7 inch netbook! The actual strike area of the keys is too small for the fingers. The action of the keys is sharp but is oddly shallow and is perfect if it is hit straight from the top and if you try to type with the normal angle, you are surely going to hate it the way I do! I don’t remember of getting irritated with the enter and the right shift key of any netbook till date. The touchpad is itself very undersized and the buttons are too slim and too closely placed near the chassis!

Battery Life

Even with the 4-celled battery the net book could only manage 2.5 hrs of life (11g WiFi running and he screen resolution put down to 66%).

Some Praises

I must be very cynical in not praising the Toshiba NB100 netbook (you must have observed it till now). However, I am not so. Here is something good I found that really deserves a tip of the hat. The netbook has very sensibly placed some of the ports on the rear end of the machine and the VGA port of the Toshiba NB100 sits on the right hand side of the extended battery booty. The Ethernet port and the AC sockets are grouped together and are placed on the left side of the netbook.

It has an easy access panel which allows the users to upgrade the ram to 2GB!

A Promise Failed

The Toshiba NB100 promised to be capable of charging any device connected to its USB2.0 ports even when the netbook is turned off and it remains connected to the main AC. Guess what? I could not charge my beloved white iPod.

Let us try!

Most of the software loaded in the Toshiba NB100 netbook is trial versions. For instance, the Norton Internet Security 2008 comes with 90 days trial and the Microsoft Office 2007 comes with a 30-day trial. It also has DVD player software from Toshiba but unfortunately, it has no optical drives.

Comments

What I found is that with the kind of looks and the facilities (which are scarce) the NB100 is a bit overpriced rather; I must say that it is quite overpriced and other players in the same category such as Acer Aspire or HP 2133 Mini-note deserve a better stand against Toshiba!