When announced earlier this year, it was seen by many as an Android competitor to the MacBook Air, with its sleek form factor, flash memory, featherweight weight and extremely gorgeous looks, but the Toshiba AC100 had a rough ride with the reviewers in other markets, resulting in its losing a lot of its initial sheen. Well, it is now available in India and at Rs 18,721, is not really a bad deal for money, notwithstanding all the criticism it has garnered overseas.
In case you have not been tuned in to the news surrounding the AC100, Toshiba claims that it is the “first device with a full size keyboard.” It packs in specs that are VERY impressive, a 10.1 inch display with LED backlighting, a 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 250 mobile processor, 512 MB RAM, a USB port, a mini USB port, Wi-Fi, HDMI port, card reader, a 1.3 MP camera, and flash memory storage of 8 GB. It runs on Android 2.1, and comes with Documents to Go preinstalled for opening and editing MS Office files, and Opera Mobile for browsing the Net. Battery life is a very impressive eight hours with seven day standby. And all this in a wonderfully sleek body that is 14mm thick at its thinnest point and 21mm at its thickest, and tips the scales at a mere 870 grammes – and looks very good at that!
So what is the catch? Well, it cannot access the Android Market and therefore has to depend on an app store called the Camangi Market, which has nothing close to the number of apps in the Android Market. There are also issues of navigation – Android is after all, mainly designed for touchscreens – and drivers for accessories. But even with those shortcomings, we cannot help but be impressed with the AC100 in terms of hardware and looks offered at a relatively low price. As for the software, we will let you know when we get our review unit.
You know, this would have been terrific if it was running Android 2.2 and had some sort of touch interface. Everyone I know is saying “Buy it and install Linux on it!”