[Lancaster] Review: Toshiba NB100

Sun Apr 19 23:21:42 UTC 2009

Sounds like a nice bit of kit ken
Also like the idea of ubuntu being installed
The acer and the asus comes with linux lite - which is pretty naff and 
pain having to reinstall a brand new netbook!

Enjoy
Wayne

Ken Walton wrote:
> I've just become the pleased owner of a Toshiba NB-100 netbook, with 
> Ubuntu Netbook Remix pre-installed, and it's a lovely little machine. 
> I bought it in Comet in Lancaster, in the hope of doing my little bit 
> to make Linux more mainstream in chain stores. I've noticed that 
> Currys and PC World switched to stocking netbooks with WinXP as soon 
> as they became available, so Currys has to be congratulated for still 
> stocking an Ubuntu machine -- though I did have to explain to the shop 
> assistant that offering me a half-price deal on Norton Anti-Virus 
> really wasn't that good an bargain... :-)
>
> But back to the machine. It's compact and well made (feels like it 
> will take a fair amount of bashing around in my rucksack) with a 
> *very* shiny lid (looks cool but shows fingerprints like nobody's 
> business). Sports a 1.9GHz Atom processor, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb hard drive, 
> built in wifi and SD card slot and a 8.9in 1024x600 screen which is 
> incredibly sharp and remarkably bright (you can actually see it 
> outdoors on a sunny day!). The battery is supposed to last around 3 
> hours, and on a quick test this afternoon, downloading a bittorrent 
> while reading a PDF, making notes in OpenOffice and ocassionally 
> looking things up in Firefox, it did 3 hours 10 minutes.
>
> Other hardware things -- 3 USB ports, a monitor port, network cable 
> socket, sound input and headphone sockets, a built-in microphone and a 
> webcam. Plus function keys to deal with everything from sound volume 
> to icon size. You can even turn the fan off for those times when 
> you're trying to sneak up on someone. No CD/DVD drive, of course, but 
> portable externale drives are pretty cheap these days.
>
> And it's fast. I think it must be the hard drive, but it's must more 
> responsive than my Dell Inspiron laptop running Ubuntu, and that had a 
> 2.3 GHz CPU. OpenOffice.org loads in about 12 seconds without the 
> Quickstarter, and that took about 30 seconds on my old machine.
>
> The keyboard, I like. I'm typing this with no trouble. Though I do 
> have small fingers, and I suspect that anyone with big fingers might 
> find it difficult to type on successfully. I wouldn't recommend it as 
> a sole machine for doing a lot of typing unless you're sure your 
> fingers will cope. I spent an entire summer living in a tent and 
> typing on a Psion Revo, so I'm quite happy with it. My only grumble is 
> the touchpad. The mouse buttons are only about 5mm wide, and it's very 
> easy to accidentally touch the touch pad when pressing a button, which 
> makes the cursor go to places it shouldn't. But I expect I'll get used 
> to that. If not, I can always use an external mouse.
>
> Ubuntu Netbook Remix is lovely. It's based on Hardy Heron, but with a 
> redesigned interface which uses the small screen size to its fullest 
> extent. When you boot up, you get a three pane interface, with menu 
> categories (office, multimedia, internet, etc) on the left, a big pane 
> in the middle showing the current icons for the menu category 
> selected, and directories in your home folder in the right pane. The 
> first category in the left pane is Favourites, and programs from other 
> categories can be put in there, so you have everything you normally 
> use right in front of you at startup.
>
> There's only one toolbar on the screen, at the top. This has an Ubuntu 
> icon at extreme left (which takes you back to the interface) and on 
> the right icons for thing like battery state, wifi signal, volume 
> control, time etc. In the middle there are tabs for each of the 
> programs you have loaded (just an icon) with the program you're 
> currently using as a large tab with title on the toolbar instead of 
> the usual window header bar. This saves a whole line of text, giving 
> you more program display space. It strikes me as a really good example 
> of interface design. But if you don't like it, its a simple matter of 
> a single click on an icon in the Preferences screen and you're back to 
> the default Ubuntu desktop.
>
> Oh, and the price -- £219.99, a whole £50 less than the equivalent 
> machine with Windows.
>
> I've seen some less than complementary reviews of the NB100. But they 
> mostly boil down to "it's not sufficiently different to other 
> netbooks" or "it's styling is old-fashioned" -- superficial aesthetic 
> judgements from people who worry too much about style. To me, it looks 
> like a  laptop -- shiny on the outside, workmanlike when you open it, 
> and an interface that's a pleasure to use. I think we're going to be 
> friends :-)
>
> -- 
> Ken Walton
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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-- 
Regards,
Wayne ward

01524 411976 - 07957448652

Lancaster Computers

www.lancastercomputers.co.uk
wayne at lancastercomputers.co.uk

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