The white box it comes in, is refreshingly simple, no pictures of desirable women adorned on the outside soliciting an invitation, no blaring slogans or fantastic claims how it will make the tea and cook your meals while you try to work you life off for a living! In fact there’s so little on the box other than the ‘Webbook’ printed on it.
And that in itself draws you to discover what might be on the inside.
I opened the box and inside was a tiny little computer, remember those Toshiba Libretto’s that were made some time ago? this is about the same size, I unpacked the machine from the wrapping materials, plugged in the battery, and then plugged in the power supply (18V 2.2A). I was ready to switch on.
Well from appearances its a little cracker, it actually looks like a real laptop! and it sports a true 10″ wide screen LCD (16:9 aspect). It comes in a tasteful silver coloured palm rest, and LCD bezel, with a very dark grey top lid, a sensible choice and limits those scratches to remain unseen when in serious use. The keyboard is a real windows keyboard and is sturdy with a nice key action, no bending or flexing.
Towards the top near the screen hinges are three buttons these are, ‘Email hot button’, ‘Power’, and ‘Sleep’. The machine sports 3 USB sockets conveniently placed on each side of the machine, a multipurpose SD card reader at the front, two audio sockets for your Skype/MSN activities, and one 10/100 LAN port. On the right hand side of the palm rest are the panel indicators for the usual functions and indicators. Inside is an Intel 2200BG 54G wireless card preconfigured and installed and of course a reasonably sized hard disk (80GB) being the later SATA type hard 2.5″ drive.
Pressing the power on its nice to see a machine that is quiet in operation this one really is very quiet, only the CPU fan cutting in to avert thermal runaway occasionally.
The web book comes as standard with Linux Ubuntu 8.04 LTS preinstalled, the machine boots fairly quickly at around 1-2 minutes, and after you have typed in your username and password you are presented with the Ubuntu desktop.
I confess that I have never used Linux before, but when presented with the desktop I was pleasantly surprised how windows like everything is in Linux. All the functions such as opening, running and copying files are virtually the same as in windows. Incidentally Elonex does offer a windows alternative on the same machine with windows XP Professional factory installed.
The Linux installation boasts a whole host of software installed as standard, such as open office, Wine(?!), lots of games! a programming interface (you could write your own Linux programs), Firefox which is the same virtually as Internet Explorer and endless utilities and folders.
What’s so nice about this machine is how Linux virtually connects to every network device so easily, in fact when using the manual network configuration dialog box its just a click and your network device is instantly configured, much better than in windows!
My wireless connection was detected and connected in less than 20 seconds! on the first try.
The touch pad has a good relative feel and moves smoothly across the desktop without undue work to move the cursor around the extremities of the screen. Audio quality is fairly good and fine for most applications
So you might be asking is the screen usable this small, well the answer is a resounding YES! I think this is where the designers have really done their homework, the screen clarity and sharpness at this size and price point is very good. You could not fault it.
The LCD screen will dim progressively to a very dark level right up to a very bright level a nice touch, this kind of adjustment is not very common amongst laptops even on most laptops currently available.
Performance is impressive, considering this is a single core CPU, it will perform most tasks very well and I found the responsiveness from the web very good, web page loading and ‘You Tube’ did not seem to put the machine under any kind of stress.
I had no trouble with using the machine, whether for surfing the web, watching videos, typing a few emails or just mucking about!
Conclusion
I have not come across many machines this year that have really impressed as much as this one, especially on price, the web book combines real world needs into a small package without it becoming gaudy in appearance or gimmicky beyond practicality, and as a bonus it looks like a proper wide screen laptop rather than something from woollies!
Performance was very impressive, its responsive and it will run the majority of programs that’s thrown at it. Obviously because of the category this machine falls into gaming and very heavy applications are not recommended, if you require a powerful machine i would suggest a full sized Duo Core laptop. I think for most people who are considering buying this I doubt whether its performance will in any way put anyone off.
Secondly it has been manufactured in a modular fashion, that means you can upgrade your RAM or your HARD DRIVE with ease and without a major rebuild or relying on service establishments to do it for you.
You can put this laptop in your car glove box its that small! or if you are a lady with a smallish handbag it would not be too much of a challenge! to fit it inside.
If your needs are for a small footprint laptop that will surf the web, run your business/EBay, Internet video conferencing or just for entertainment this one gets my vote.
Webbook Facts
VIA C7-C 1.6G CPU
512M RAM DDR2
80GB SATA HDD
10″ Wide screen
3 X USB 2.O Skts
1 X 10/100 Lan
SD card multi reader
2.5Hr battery Weight 1.3Kg
Optional equipment
External USB CDROM drive
Wrist Vault USB flash drive with a Linux backup.
In Car adapter bracket to fix your web book onto it.
I hope you found the above useful
Until next time
-Benny Holden
This review is written by me Benny Holden, all views, opinions expressed and any endorsements given shall not carry any liability whatsoever by me or will I enter into any litigation, entertain disputes or for personal gain by any entity wishing to pursue.
Benny Holden
I have worked with Toshiba/Dell/Gateway/IBM Laptops over the last 15 years. From the Satellite 2100 (all white with a blue DSTN 10″ screen!)to the most recent Toshiba G40 QOSMIO
I work on all aspects of TOSHIBA Laptop repairs right down to component level, BGA removal and replacement and reballing, and a multitude of refurbishment programs for these machines.
I have also written many very useful E-books on all aspects of maintaining, repairing and upgrading any Toshiba Laptop
If you want to know more about any Toshiba Laptop click on the Link below!
http://salesoffers.synthasite.com/webbookoffer
Author: Benny Holden
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff
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