Toshiba makes a Netbook, but not for North America

Toshiba's Atom-powered mini-notebook at Ceatec.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)

CHIBA, Japan--Toshiba hopped onto the Netbook bandwagon here at Ceatec, announcing the NB110.

Design-wise, there's nothing too remarkable about it. It resembles an Eee PC, with specs a mix between that and the HP Mini-Note: Intel Atom processor, Windows XP, 1GB RAM, 120GB hard drive, weighs 2.3 pounds, 802.11b/g wireless, Bluetooth 2.1, and 3 USB 2.0 ports.

Toshiba is actually one of the pioneers in mini-notebooks, with the Libretto that first came out in 2001, and the Tecra M4 convertible notebook. The NB110 certainly looks like it's related to those two, but unlike its predecessors, won't be available in the U.S. market anytime soon.

"The market is just not right yet," a Toshiba representative at Ceatec said.

But it will be available in Japan starting at the end of October for 70,000 yen ($660), with Europe and other Asian markets to follow.

Click here for more stories on Ceatec 2008.

[Seaspray0]

I can agree. Most consumers do want an optical drive (typically a DVD drive) which is not common on the mini notebooks. Sure, you can boot it to network and restore the computer through a bootp service, but the average household doesn't have that capability. Now if they provided a bootable USB drive to restore the computer, I'd be interested in that. They could even use ROM for the usb drive which would make the cost comparable to a set of DVD's.

[wilswong]

in actual fact, one can do a USB boot up via the bios settings. The only issue is to put the recovery CD content into the USB. The techies shouldn't be an issue but since most of the users of netbook are lay people, the manufacturers should look into this.