Latest Laptops

Toshiba is more than a little late to the Netbook party, and its inaugural effort (at least aimed at U.S. consumers) is the slick-looking Toshiba Mini NB205, but an awkward six-cell battery and some of the worst audio we’ve heard on a Netbook may not justify the now-premium $399 price.

With a familiar set of components, including an Intel Atom N280 CPU (similar to recent Asus models, and a tiny step up from the N270), 1GB of RAM, Windows XP, and a 160GB 5,400rpm HDD, the NB205 hits all the Netbook marks, but one can find the Acer Aspire One AOD250 for $299 (which does trade down to the N270 CPU), or a longer-lasting, but less awkward, battery in the $398 Asus Eee PC 1005HA.

That said, the textured white design is a standout (other available colors are blue, brown, and pink), and the big touch pad and widely spaced, raised keys may feel more familiar to those used to traditional full-size laptops.

One of the most notable features on the NB205 is the keyboard. Breaking from the recent trend toward Apple- or Sony-style keyboards, with flat, low-profile keys, the NB205 goes for a raised keyboard, with widely separated tile keys. That’s makes each key a little smaller, but the distance from letter to letter is close to what you’d find in a mainstream laptop keyboard. We had to take some time to get used to the new keyboard design, but eventually found it very easy and comfortable to use. However, some important keys get cut down a bit too much, including the Tab key, and the tilde key is awkwardly shoved in to the left of the spacebar, throwing off our touch typing.