Alongside Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Toshiba’s Folio 100 tablet has gained a lot of coverage at IFA. The 10.1” tablet had a surprisingly humble presence on Toshiba’s booth, but certainly not the kind of profile Samsung granted to its new tablet. As for Toshiba’s much hyped Libretto dual screen tablet/laptop, you would assume that Toshiba would have been pushing the product hard, but again, it received a very limited presence amongst the other notebooks on display.
Toshiba may have their own reasons, but having tried both products out at the show, here’s my rationale. They’re not very good.
Let’s discuss the Folio first. At 10.1”, it’s a “full-sized” tablet, slightly larger than the iPad. However, it’s 1024 x 600 resolution is lower than Apple’s device and the screen is simply not as good. Whether it was a problem with the demonstration models I don’t know, but the touchscreen felt laggy to the touch, requiring several touches before opening applications. The Folio’s specs look great on paper – 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G networking, HDMI and USB 2.0 connections and up to 7 hours of battery life. But the hardware feels cheap in your hands – cheaper than the Galaxy Tab, and certainly without the polish of the iPad. The Android 2.2 OS was showing a mess of icons on the display, cluttering the experience. Android has a growing number of fans, but I found Toshiba’s implementation to be very confusing – a bewildering array of user interfaces depending on the application in use, none of which were particularly intuitive. For me, the Folio 100 simply didn’t offer the kind of consistent, quality user experience that I was expecting.
Interestingly, one of the display models on the booth had crashed, and the Toshiba representative at hand was unable to restart the device.
Toshiba are promoting the Folio with the strapline “Your Life in Your Hands”, and you know, they’re right. Make sure you give the Folio a try out before committing.
Whilst I was not impressed with the Folio, it’s a Rolls Royce compared to Toshiba’s dual screen Libretto. Whilst Microsoft wisely left their Courier project in the research and development lab, Toshiba brought a similar dual screen concept to market, which was crazy enough without shipping it with Windows 7. Microsoft’s latest OS may be touchscreen compatible, but that does not make it easy to use, especially on two relatively small 7” touchscreens.
Again, Toshiba’s plastics felt cheap to the touch, with the screen hinges bending under a little pressure. The Libretto is also a lot thicker than you’d imagine, resembling more a retro Nintendo “Game and Watch” chassis than the latest cutting edge technology. There may well have been a few opportunistic sales available for the Libretto as a curiosity, but not only is the two screen form factor confusing (with some applications opening in the right hand window, some not), but this kind of device really needs a bespoke touchscreen user interface to be useful.
Certainly both the Folio and Libretto score top marks on innovation, but lack the quality and polish in both hardware and software that you’ll find elsewhere.
