As part of Toshiba’s 20th anniversary celebration of the first laptop computer, the company has brought back its libretto line of ultraportables, starting with the miniscule U100.
This cute little puppy weighs in a paltry 2.16 pounds, and includes one of smallest widescreen displays we’ve ever seen.
The libretto brand disappeared some three years ago, but Taro Hiyama, a vice president of marketing at Toshiba, explained that “customer demand”, led to the company reviving the wee chappie.
“As today’s professionals continue to be always on the go, the return of the mini-notebook will allow users to travel with a fully-featured compact design,” he explained.
The libretto U100 is based around an Intel 855 chipset and Pentium M753 processor running at 1.2 GHz and comes with a clever suite of security features.
For maximum security, the pint-sized palmtop wedges in a biometric, integrated fingerprint reader with the 60 GB hard drive being protected by Toshiba’s ‘EasyGuard’ technology.
This cunning bit of wizardry calls on a 3D accelerometer to halt the drive heads to prevent data in case of an accidental drop.
Powered by Windows XP Professional, the machine comes with a respectable 512 MB of 333 MHz RAM, of which the onboard Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chip gobbles up between 16-64 MB of memory (needless to say, the libretto isn’t for hard core power gamers).
The titchy Toshiba features a 7.2″ WXGA display that somehow crams in a resolution of 1280 x 760 pixels. Users not gifted with eagle-like eyesight may find the installed screen zooming utility invaluable.
Despite its dwarf-threatening proportions, the libretto manages to squeeze in a slew of connectivity options, including 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K V.92 modem, IEEE1394 (FireWire), two USB 2.0 ports, SD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g (there’s also an optional docking bay available offering a DVD read/writer)
Although some predicted that the growth of all-singing PDAs and, latterly, smart phones, would sound the death knell for ultraportables, Toshiba are gambling on there being a niche market for smaller, cheaper, Wi-Fi enabled laptops offering the convenience of laptops without the bulk.
Measuring in at a humble 8.3 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches, the libretto U100 retails for US$1,999 (£1,045/€1,500) in the US, with a possibility of a European release this summer.
On a personal note, it’s great to see the old brand coming back from the dead.
I bought a Libretto CT50 back in 1998 (see pic), and although the batteries lasted as long as pile of pork piles at a Billy Bunter convention, I loved the little fella.
Sweatband-toting sporty types will be pleased to learn that Nokia has introduced a new handset for active-minded consumers, the Nokia 5140i camera phone.
Water-bottle clutching joggers will appreciate the ‘Fitness Coach’ application, offering an ‘always-on’ personal trainer that (apparently) “encourages users to go the extra mile or finish the last set.”
The phone also includes the 
BBCi has launched a programming service for digital satellite viewers showcasing short films made by ordinary folk across the UK.
Video Nation broke new ground when it first hit UK TV screens – running in short slots dropped in to the programming schedule.
Content on the ‘Your Stories’ service is divided into daily themes, each with its own title. “My Music”, for example, featured an eight-year-old trumpet player and a blind pianist.
BBCi controller, Rahul Chakkara, explained the reasoning behind Your Stories service: “The BBCi audience is maturing, and is looking for content that is social and highly involving, available to them whenever they want.”
Big sighs of disappointment are heard all around Europe, as Sony officially announce the released date of the handheld gaming/media dream machine, the Sony PSP. It’s going to be 1 September 2005.
Sony have announced the PlayStation Portable Value Pack at €249 (£179/US$323), which includes headphones, a 32Mb Memory Stick Duo, power supply, protective pouch, etc. The hit film Spider-Man 2 will be available on a UMD disc, free to early purchasers of PSP when they register on YourPSP.com.
There are many tales of PSP-owners modifying their pride and joy to browser the Internet via Wi-Fi, or indeed run Instant Messaging client software.
Ericsson has reported a thumping great rise in quarterly profits, helped by the deployment of 3G networks.
These figures fly in the face of predictions from investors and analysts that sales would drop steadily for the big telecoms firms as Chinese manufacturers took over the industry.
In a quest to blast their already soaring profits further up into the stratosphere, Google will test a cost-per-impression bidding model for AdWords ads, letting advertisers specify groups of sites or specific sites in Google’s ad network.
Google has, however, promised limitations on the animated advertising fluff that can appear on their adverts, with blinking ads that continuously loop already declared verboten.
The search engine heavyweights are hoping that the approach will appeal to advertisers who are fussy about where their brand appears or are aiming for a certain niche demographic.
In an astonishing volte-face, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has announced that it now endorses the auctioning of virtual items from its massively popular online game, Everquest II – with the electronics giant pocketing a cut of the cash, naturally.
Personally, we’d rather buy a round of lovely real ale than shell out for the Dark Lord of Deltronia’s Mystical Turbo Sword of Mwegneli, but as we’ve reported before (
“There already is a ‘virtual class system’ within the game itself – you earn status and faction standing, money, prestige, titles, fancy clothes and transport, you start living in a hovel but can move on up to luxury apartments etc – But at least till now you could assume that most people had ‘earned’ those things by playing the game.
“I’m not sure of the mechanics in EQII, but in WoW (World of Warcraft) they have mitigated the potential for selling items somewhat by introducing the concept of having things bind to that character when it is picked up, meaning you can’t transfer items to other players, hence no selling though eBay and the like.”
For some gamers, an officially sanctioned auction site is an inevitable consequence of the growing popularity of virtual gaming, with Sony’s cut, a reasonable price to pay for eliminating a lot of scams.
Over here in Digital-Lifestyles land, we’re always getting our ears bent by some PR-type banging on about how mobile TV is going to be “the next big app” to hit handsets.
M1 and its partners plan to knock out dramas with a specific mobile version, which will be different to the regular TV episodes, allowing viewers the choice of watching a broadcast TV version or an extension of the same show on mobile.
Samsung have made their intentions clear. They want to be the number one in portable music players.
The potential of the 65k colour screen is well demonstrated by the graphically-rich menuing, but when you try to display photos and text files on it, its limitations are highlighted – it’s just too small, and when loading images, slow.
Pro 
Champagne corks were popping like manic machine gun fire at Google yesterday as the company reported a thumping fivefold increase in profits in the first quarter.
Revenues generated from Google’s partner sites through its AdSense programs generated $584 million, or 47 percent of revenues, – a hefty 75 percent increase over partner-related revenues a year ago.