Toshiba's AC100 8-hour Android smartbook plays 1080p video on a 1GHz Tegra 250 processor (update: video!)
By Thomas Ricker 
posted June 21st 2010 5:25AM
posted June 21st 2010 5:25AM
Update: Netbooked got its hands on with the Japanese Dynabook AZ twin and received confirmation that it'll ship in Japan in August for between ¥40,000 and ¥50,000 (about $438 to $548). Video after the break.
Toshiba unveils its ultraslim smart companion AC100
Highly portable smart companion with always-on capability needs less than a second to wake up from standby mode
06.20.2010 – Neuss, Germany – Toshiba Europe GmbH today entered the mobile internet device market by introducing the Toshiba AC100, which is designed with a clamshell form factor. Its slimness and light weight coupled with its always-on capability makes it the ideal device to consume media, browse the Internet and view and edit documents, emails and other messages while out and about. The AC100 can remain in standby mode for up to seven days. The highly personalisable 25.7cm (10.1'') AC100 will be available during the third quarter of 2010 throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The best of two worlds
"Our smart companion, the AC100, is a member of the mobile internet device segment that combines the best of two product categories: like a smartphone, it is always on, whilst offering the convenience of a clamshell netbook with a bigger screen and a full size keyboard," says Thomas Teckentrup, General Manager, Product, Strategy and Development Division, Computer Systems Group EMEA. It is targeted at users who utilise several devices but still desire an easy-to use, slim and light smart companion that can be taken almost everywhere and that offers superior usability to that of smartphones.
No need to recharge every day
The AndroidTM[1] based system takes less than a second to switch the AC100 from standby to full activity mode whilst supporting a smartphone-like 'always-on' capability. The Toshiba AC100 can go for up to seven days without having to be recharged. When being used intensively, it can provide at least eight hours of mixed browsing and video playback on one charge.
Simple-to-use and easy-to-personalise
The black and orange coloured AC100 is intuitively usable and offers the possibility to personalise the device by downloading applications and widgets. The AC100 ships with a number of applications pre-installed, amongst them Documents To Go®, for viewing and editing Microsoft Office files, an E-mail Client with POP3, IMAP and Exchange support, a messaging client, Opera Mobile for browsing the web as well as Toshiba Media Player for playing and viewing video, music and pictures.
Users can also deploy up to five home screens on their Toshiba AC100, which can be configured to change automatically depending on their location as indicated by the SSID[2]. For example, an owner could set short-cuts to work-related applications, widgets and 'live-files' to appear on the home screen when they are in their office, personal applications and widgets when they are at home and entertainment-orientated applications and widgets everywhere else.
Facts & Figures* The AC100
· NVIDIA® Tegra™ 250 Mobile Processor (1GH, ARM)
· AndroidTM2.1
· RAM: 512 MB DDR2 (333 MHz)
· up to 32GB SSD
· 25.7cm (10.1'') TruBrite® display with LED backlight, 1,024 x 600 pixels
· Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR*, WLAN (802.11 b/g/n), Mobile Broadband*
· 1 x USB 2.0, 1x Mini USB, Card Reader (SD, MMC), Audio out/Mic in combo socket, HDMI®
· 1.3 MPixel Webcam with integrated microphone
· Location based switchable desktop
· Toshiba Home Menu, a personalisable desktop with widgets and shortcuts
· Size: 262.1mm x 189.8mm x 14 / 21mm
· weight: starting at 870g
* depending on configuration and local availability
@uckApple Got an error when replying and since nothing showed after about a minute, I posted again. Same error and still nothing, so I tried a different browser. :
@Zappy
LOL this is messed up.. they must be doing work on the comments section, because there are alot of bugs in this article.. People replying to one another on entirely different posts, triple double posting.. Lol
@uckApple Or perhaps they are trying to clean it up, and we keep replying on the issue. :)
I think Android on a laptop is a good idea.
@uckApple I don't, I think MeeGo would suit much better. I have HTC Desire and I would never use Android on a laptop, it simply doesn't cut it. There is multitasking but you can't have multiple windows around.
@uckApple It should run froyo though since froyo has flash.
@jjrudey
I was going to mention this, but a device like this will get it soon anyway.
@Dking7
Good point, but for the majority of those who dont want to multi task a lot, this is perfect, because battery life will be extremely awesome and it can do most of the usual stuff.
@uckApple
If I can do my PPT, excel stuff on this along with the music and some videos - this thing is a godsend.
@uckApple If they can release this within 6 months this has the best chance at being my next laptop. Add to that with that kind of battery life/power consumption this might make for an HTPC (HTL?) that can sip (lick?) power.
@egress63 Google docs would nearly be assured, anything else would be upto MS. Simple editing of some docs might be possible, but I wouldn't expect immediate support of full-featured ports.
@juanvaldez (by MS)
@uckApple
I like it but would really like it to dual boot something a little more powerful like windows 7 for when i need it.
looking pretty interesting, altho' i'm not sure how an os designed primarily for touch use will work in traditional laptop shape...
on a related note - is that a touchpad on an android device?
Opera Mobile?! Has that been seen\been announced on any other device? Really holding my breath to see it. It was great on (shrug) windows mobile.
@Zappy
Opera Mini on Android is a terrible browser, though I hear it's great on Blackberry
@dracoaffectus yep, it was good on minmo as well. Thou mobile is an entierly different product. As long as they polish it, I'm pretty sure it will be great. Opera turbo helps a lot on slow connections.
@Zappy
People keep confusing Opera Mobile and Mini.
Mini is a java based light browser.
Mobile is written in C/C++ IIRC and it's very similar to what Desktop Opera provides in terms of user experience
Touch screen could have make it more "Me want!"
looking pretty interesting, altho' i'm not sure how an os designed primarily for touch use will work in traditional laptop shape...
on a related note - is that a touchpad on an android device?
Screens is not 1080p
@kof2000 This is a cheap device, at least relative to the specs/capabilities. 1080P will be video out by VGA/HDMI...
Wouldn't it be better with Ubuntu? At least there is a lot of productivity software for normal Linux (as opposed to crippled Linux which is android).
Anything out there, that has it source open (free as in beer or not), can easily be recompiled to ARM based architecture. Open Office? Check. GIMP? Check. Ocatve for scientific calculations? Check. (BTW it tends to be faster than Matlab. If you are doing numerics and do not need Matlabs toolboxes Octave is the weapon of choice) Blender? Check. LaTeX for academic writing? Check. Media players? Check. Browsers? Check. There is everything for Linux and nothing yet for Android (Crippled Linux TM).
@stoffer
I take it, you enjoy using Matlab? lol
@stoffer Android doesn't have half these features because it was never designed for laptops >.<
And why would google care about making Android work on them either? What with Chrome OS coming out soon..
Seems a little silly to me..
@uckApple I do indeed. It is probably the most significant piece of software ever.
@stoffer
Octave is not -I repeat: NOT- faster than Matlab, and it's also hardly usable as a substitute since it lacks so many functions. I've actually been digging into the Octave code at work on a number of occasions, and most of the time when stuff gets complex, Octave takes the easy way out, using N^2 algorithms where much better ones exist but are hard to implement. It's a nice alternative for doing some quick & dirty graphs and such, but as soon as you get to the complex stuff, Octave is a toy compared to Matlab.
@stoffer
Don't expect Japanese company to offer freedom from their "support"... they won't let you get out of the jail, like Apple do on iPhone but often even more strict.
@stoffer
@stoffer Exactly, everthing is there for a distro like Ubuntu, yet nothing is there for Android. Why they don't just use a full OS is baffling.
@stoffer
i agree. i would rather see the Ubuntu Netbook 10.04 on this machine rather than android. I love my droid, but with this much power and size i want full linux. open office, vlc, full browsers etc.
@stoffer Agreed - I'm not a Linux user but given that Apple aren't likely to sell an ARM smartbook running on (full version) OS X, it's where I want to be when I finally get a system. Unfortunately, a lot of ARM stuff currently has proprietary drivers, making it hard to run Linux software on it. I know there is a project to improve this, but it doesn't seem to be moving fast at present.
(You can't 'just recompile' all software to run on ARM, or at least, that's sometimes a difficult task. To give an example I use, is there Eclipse/SWT for ARM, yet? I looked a while ago and couldn't find one. Come to that I think the Java runtime is missing a lot of its optimisations on ARM, too, and that's pretty critical to good performance on a chip that is round about Atom level of power. Anyhow, that's one thing, but in general there is work that needs doing if the architecture becomes popular for general use.)
So yes this is exactly the right hardware - Cortex A9 in a netbook, finally - and it looks great, and the battery life's, eh, okay. Wrong operating system, though. Maybe next year.
I wouldn't mind just hooking my Android phone to a 23" monitor via HDMI and using a bluetooth keyboard. I wouldn't even need a computer. Just pop it in a dock with external HD and monitor already connected.
God damn it - couldnt they have just dropped the keyboard and made a tegra tablet?
Im pulling hairs waiting for an alternative to the bloody ipad.
@ftgeneral
Why? I know I'm not getting an iPad or any alternative because I have no use for such a device. But if you DO have a use for one, and one is available...why not get it?
@Tes
because the one available doesn't fill his/her needs and there are better alternatives coming?
i know i'm not getting any tablet in the short-mid term either, but if i did feel the need for one, i'd rather wait for a good one than get the first one available
@mrqs
What is it the iPad can't do that you assume other devices can? Apart from the Flash of course. For me Flash facilitates the consumption of media and the iPad has access to most of the media people are keen to access to the issue is a small one.
@ftgeneral
Haha. You're going to be a hairless human before that happens. iPad alternatives are all vaporware until next year. ROFLOL.
@Tes
my comment was meant to be a bit more generic than that, but since you ask, proper multitasking and hdmi output would be a couple of things i'd want from a tablet
@mrqs
not to mention better value for money - the ipad is quite massively overpriced imo
Thinner than a mac book air?
@Leegh229
it was never about thickness. it was always about weight. while the MBA is thin. it is weights 1lb more than other ultraportables from toshiba and sony, which is a lot in the world of ultraportables!
im curious how much this laptop weights!
@dark star it weighs 870g (1.91 lbs) and is 14mm thick (.55 inches). They makes it about 2/3 the Air's weight and 2/3 the thickness.
MeeGo will own. Chrome OS with Google’s privacy will be one big hellhole.
Is it really justifiable having 1080p on a screen that small? Is it even worth it?
@pintonion It has an HDMI port dude..
@sagi446 I herped a derp.
@pintonion
interesting thought. I wondered the same thing when they braged about the "retina" display on the fruit phone.
@benchase7 There has to be a limit on how "clear" a screen can look at these sizes. I mean, I'm not jamming my face 2 inches from the display. at about 2 feet, which is what I would be from a 8" screen, 720p is more than enough for me. And for phones with screens like 4" or less, this whole thing about super extreme pixel density also doesn't make much difference to me. Must be my glasses.
@pintonion
Or marketing bollocks.