While Toshiba’s had netbooks out in Japan for a while (and Europe, recently) the company’s been a wallflower here in the US, patiently watching as netbooks have evolved over the past year or so and taking notes in a leather-bound pad marked “Netbooks: Pros and Cons” that it carries around in its back pocket. Sure, it looks dumb when Toshiba takes out the pad in a restaurant to write down a new witty quote it’s never heard before, but it’s also helped in readying a US version of the NB200-series netbook.
PC Magazine spent a little time with the new netbook — actually two netbooks, the $399 NB205 and $349 NB205 Fusion — and praised the smudge-free exterior, full-size keyboard, and internal 3G connection (the $50-cheaper Fusion version has only a 93% keyboard and no 3G).
It certainly looks nice, but the specs are pretty run-of-the-mill: low-res 1024×600 10-inch LCD, 1GB of RAM, and a six-cell battery at under three pounds. Toshiba’s opted to suit up the NB205 with Intel’s slightly newer and slightly faster Intel N280 CPU, which runs at 1.66GHz as opposed to the N270 at 1.6GHz.
Here’s a video, for your perusal. The NB205 will be available in four colors (including the god-awful pink and silver motif shown above) towards the end of June.