I received my Toshiba Libretto W105 (the dual screen computer) today. So far the quality of my user experience is mixed.
(There isn't a Libretto forum, apparently, so I'm posting here. Feel free to move this post if necessary.)
Summary
Is the Libretto an iPad killer? No.
Is it what I expected? Mostly.
Someone will probably post videos on YouTube for Libretto unboxing, startup, and so on. I don't expect to post videos or photos except to demonstrate something about the user experience.
Notes & Caveats
I'm a full-time .NET programmer and GUI designer, and I've designed and implemented zooming user interfaces. I pay close attention to usability: responsiveness, text size, control size (such as button size), menu design, color palette, accessibility, smoothness of transitions, and so on.
Our household has an iPad, and I've been using an iPhone since summer 2007, about half a year after it was first released. I wanted a Libretto so that I could write touch-enabled Windows applications for a small device.
Be aware that although I'll post mostly negative comments, I'm glad I bought the device, and I look forward to using it and writing software to run on it.
Libretto Startup & Login
It's unfortunate that the first experience of the device is the standard Windows 7 setup. The dialogs and controls haven't been resized for the device, so the controls are tiny. It'd be easier to use a stylus than a finger.
When you log in, only the top screen is available. The keyboard for password entry does not occupy the full width of the screen, so the buttons are quite small. The visual feedback for this password keyboard is not good: when you press a key, your finger blocks the view of the key as it lights up briefly to indicate you've pressed it.
A stylus--if it would work--would be a better choice for password entry. Once you've logged in you have access to the keyboards that appear in the bottom screen, and those keyboards are much better.
Setup may be the first time you discover that the point you believe you are touching and the point where the touch is registered can be distant enough to cause mis-hits. This is compounded by the problem of the small buttons.
The Touch Experience in General
The responsiveness and accuracy of touch on either screen is just okay. Windows 7 support for touch doesn't compare favorably to touch on the iPhone and iPad, but that's Microsoft's problem.
To get a key press to register on a virtual keyboard on the bottom screen, I sometimes have to thump a virtual key fairly hard. It can take several tries to get the keyboard switch in the upper right corner of the bottom screen to register a hit. The problem may be a mis-hit rather than a lack of sensitivity.
The toolbar buttons at the top of the bottom screen are too small. I'd appreciate having slightly taller buttons even if that meant having fewer free pixels for the virtual keyboard and Bulletin Board and such.
When you touch the top screen, the lack of sensitivity means the screen can bounce a bit when you touch it. If you use your other hand or leg to support the screen then this is less of a problem.
There may well be a means to adjust touch sensitivity, but this setup feature doesn't jump out at you.
The more one needs to refer to a user manual, the worse the design is.
Applications and Widgets
The image and video capture applet is okay, but by default the colors are desaturated and the images don't look that good. Perhaps with bright light the images would look acceptable.
I started up the books app. None of the free books interested me, so I checked out the user guide. The text of the user guide was too small to be readable. After several attempts I still couldn't figure out how to render the text large and clear enough to be readable, so I closed the books app in frustration.
It's not immediately obvious why one needs the photo rotating/stretching feature in the Bulletin Board. The responsiveness isn't that good, and the way in which the image is pinned at the top center rather than the top left is odd. Removing the pin causing the image to "fall away". Is the image deleted? Retrievable? I guess I'll find out later.
There's a zoom feature of sorts--and zoom is desperately needed--but it doesn't behave the way I would expect.
- Click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner.
- A message pops up after more than 1 second: "Tap on the screen"
- I tap on one of the screens.
- A rectangular magnifier appears. The magnifier is roughly 2.5 inches wide by 2 inches high.
- If I touch anything, anywhere, the magnifier disappears.
I'm not sure if the magnifier is supposed to be draggable. It doesn't appear to be.
Miscellany
The box included a glossy one page brochure: "Join the exclusive libretto (R) Owners Club!"
The website listed on the brochure doesn't exist. I called tech support to find out that, rather than visit
www.tais.librettoclub.com (do not use!)
Libretto owners should instead visit
http://laptops.toshiba.com/libretto-club
There you can "register", which means
- providing personal information such as your name and address (no problem)
- providing data such as your household income (so yes, this is marketing data, not registration)
- clicking the Submit button, and then receiving NO email confirmation the submission; after about half an hour I received an email from Toshiba Direct, but I'm not sure if it was an automatic email or a follow-up to registration.
I was hoping to submit comments that the developers could read. Apparently it could be "several weeks" (?) before an additional survey is sent out. If that survey doesn't allow for "free form" answers I'm not sure it'll be worth filling out.
In general I'm surprised at the number of little goofs associated with the product rollout. Using the "early adopter" label doesn't excuse some of these oversights.
Oddities include the following:
- To ask a question of tech support, you must first provide your device's serial number, your personal information, etc., which takes several minutes. (This may be standard practice, but standard practice is annoying.) So where on the device is the serial number? If the serial number is there, it's not obvious where it is.When I was told that the serial number is a 9-character alphanumeric, I found a 9-character code on the shipping document and provided that. The 9-character code wasn't labeled with "serial number" or "s/n" or anything like that.
- The signup process to gain access to this forum could use some work.
- Some of the emails sent from Toshiba Direct had odd line breaks and looked a bit weird.
- The fan's a bit loud, and it runs almost constantly. Maybe I can shut some Windows junk down to reduce the processor load.
- You'll almost certainly want to change default settings for text size in various applications and in Windows. I'm a bit leery of making too many changes, though, because not all websites and Windows apps handle font size changes properly.
- Save yourself some hassle and use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
Finally
In many ways I enjoy the Libretto. I'm not going to send it back (though the thought occurred to me), and I won't sell it. Although the user interaction is not on par with the iPad, it may be unfair to compare the two. The Libretto meets my basic need to have a touchscreen device running a full version of Windows.
The touch-enabled features need work. If the developers would have time and interest to improve a number of the features, this could become a very cool device. With this first version the usability is a bit disappointing. In my opinion it would be better to have fewer features and focus instead on the proper sizing of text and controls.
Toshiba may need to hire some new interaction designers to revamp the features. That or the designers should have more say over what features should be included or excluded, because there appear to be several "me too" features that aren't necessary.
The Libretto looks cool. It feels solid. I've used it to write long messages on social networking sites. (However, this forum post was written using my laptop.) The virtual keyboard may be a bit better than that of the iPad, but the virtual keyboards are the only touch-enabled feature that stand out.
If you've read this far, thanks for your patience.
