When a man walks into a second-hand electronics store in Akihabara (one of Tokyo’s best-known tech neighborhoods), he never thinks he’ll find an almost unique gem. It was about A Toshiba Libretto 50 with Windows 95 Which was sold for around 140 Euros, but the most curious thing is that this little laptop cost more than 1,700 Euros when it hit the market in 1997.
Toshiba introduced the Libretto 50 on January 7 of that year, and at the time it attracted a lot of attention due to its size. It measures 21 cm wide, 11.5 deep and 3.4 thick and weighs around 850 grams, which puts it down well. The conventional laptops of that time could weigh several kilos. So, we’re talking about a complete Windows system in a device that almost fits in the palm of your hand.
Inside was a 75 MHz Intel Pentium processor, 16 MB of RAM and an 810 MB hard drive. It had a 6.1-inch color screen with a resolution of 640 × 480 pixels, as well as a small keyboard with 80 keys. And although these features are quite modest today, the computer can run programs like Word 95, Excel 95 or Internet Explorer 3.
Having such a small computer in 1997 wasn’t exactly cheap.
The Libretto 50 was sold in Japan for between 228,000 and 248,000 yen, depending on the version selected. At the approximate exchange rate reported in the original publication, we’re talking about 1,590 to 1,730 euros, quite a lot for a laptop of the time. Of course, Toshiba had to evolve A cooling system that takes advantage of the motherboard to dissipate heatApart from using a magnesium panel of only 0.7 millimeters to achieve such a compact device.
The autonomy was also not particularly high, since its battery worked between one and a half to two hours, although it could reach four hours with a larger capacity battery. And to use certain accessories, such as connecting an external floppy drive or other peripherals, you had to resort to additional adapters and modules.
Despite its high price, Toshiba decided to take the computer outside of Japan a few months later. It announced its international launch in June 1997, and in the United States, the Libretto 50 carried an announced price of $1,999. The company has also produced A rare edition named Libretto 50Mwith a touch screen and intended for Japanese insurer Meiji Life, although this last model was not sold to the general public.
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