IP: Toshiba won't sell you the coolest laptop around.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: <wra () amole com>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 22:16:25 -0700
To: <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Slate Article

webhead
America Second
Why Toshiba won't sell you the coolest laptop around.
By Bill Barnes
Posted  Tuesday, July 2, 2002, at 1:12 PM PT


I'm typing this on a Toshiba Libretto L5, a full-function laptop that takes
up less space on my desk than a comic book. With built-in wireless
networking I can surf the Web anywhere and everywhere in my house. Finally,
I can read Slate in the bathroom! The laptop is so light that I carry it
with me wherever I go. Who needs a PDA with a laptop this small? There's
only one problem. Toshiba won't sell you one. Like many of the hottest
laptops around, it is sold only in Japan.

Two years ago my wife and I spent an afternoon touring Akihabara, the Tokyo
neighborhood devoted to consumer electronics. Everywhere we looked we found
devices more advanced than any I'd seen in the United States. The gadgets
were smaller, lighter, more feature-packed, and just generally cooler than
models sold here. It was frustrating and almost insulting‹why don't we
deserve the best too? There are several explanations for this phenomenon:

1. The Japanese are experts in small. If you lived in a country as tightly
packed as Japan, you'd be an expert in small, too. Because of their living
conditions, the Japanese value small, and they're willing to pay for it.
Americans think smaller is cooler, but Japanese think smaller is better.

2. The Japanese use their home market for market research. Japanese
electronics manufacturers flood the market with dozens of variations on a
theme and then cull the most successful products for export. There is some
truth to this, but since some of the best sellers in Japan never make it to
our shores, it's not the whole story.

3. The Japanese are more prone to follow trends. Many of the devices you can
find in Japan but not here reflect some hot trend we haven't caught on to
yet (and some that we may not‹the electronic equivalents of pet rocks). In
Japan, electronics buyers consider trendy features necessary, even if
they'll never use them. The technology Bluetooth, which allows laptops to
wirelessly upload movies from your camcorder or to connect to the Internet
using your cell phone, is much bigger in Japan than here. Same for 802.11b
Wi-Fi wireless networks, which are slowly catching on in the United States
but have taken off like wildfire in Japan's densely packed urban areas.

4. The Japanese are more feature-conscious than price-conscious. Japanese
consumers want the smallest, lightest, most feature-rich laptop they can
proudly show off to their friends. Americans are more likely to crow about
the great deal they got. Take this test. If you could get a full-featured
3-pound laptop for $1,999, how much more would you pay for a 2.5-pounder? Or
to get it an inch smaller? If your eyes glazed over just thinking about that
question, you are in the American majority. If your answer was closer to
"anything," break out the sushi. In your soul you are more Japanese than
American. 

There's some good news for the Japanese-at-heart gear-head who demands the
best at any price. Americans can get their hands on the Libretto and on a
dozen or so other hot laptops at Dynamism.com <http://www.dynamism.com/> , a
specialty importer that focuses on Japan-only consumer electronics.
(Dynamism lent me the Libretto
<http://www.dynamism.com/libretto/index.shtml> .) They buy the laptops in
Japan, install a U.S. version of Windows, and configure them with the
correct hardware drivers (sometimes a nontrivial operation‹drivers for
Japan-only hardware do not always work on U.S. versions of Windows), then
send them to you. They'll even install a U.S. keyboard on some models (mine
had one), though the normal Japanese keyboard has English characters and
works fine. Their not-inconsiderable markup (about 30 percent) covers all
taxes, duty, and shipping fees. If required, they'll ship your laptop to
Japan and back for warranty work, and they'll even send you driver updates
for free. 

Dynamism's Libretto starts at $1,999. To get one in Japan you'd pay about
$1,500, including tax and duty (plus travel costs). If a 30 percent markup
is too much for you, there's always someone selling a Libretto on eBay. But
I wouldn't go that route. International auction purchases are even less
reliable than domestic ones, the driver issues can be daunting, and based on
the prices I saw on some of the units for sale, I strongly doubt they come
with legally licensed software.

The Libretto is not for everyone. The 10-inch 1,280-by-600  screen is
amazingly bright and clear, but if you find yourself squinting at a normal
laptop display this one will give you eyestrain. The keys are tight compared
to a standard keyboard, and even tighter if you're used to an ergonomic
keyboard. The Transmeta Crusoe microprocessor (comparable to an Intel
Pentium III) normally runs at 800 mhz but slows down when operating solely
on battery. Sometimes it was too slow to display certain intensive video
formats. I got three-plus hours out of the built-in battery when doing
nothing but typing, but hard-disk-intensive operations like watching movies
or listening to music drained it much faster. And don't plan on watching
movies on the airplane. You'll need to buy a separate DVD drive that plugs
into the standard USB interface or PC-card slot‹and that probably means a
separate power supply and/or battery. Finally, if you hate the "eraserhead"
mouse-substitute then you'll hate this one too.

What makes the Libretto so great is that it takes up very little space. At
10.5 inches wide by 6.6 inches deep, it actually sits between the keyboard
and monitor of my desktop, allowing me to check mail on one machine while
running Photoshop full-screen on the other. On a plane that advantage is
magnified because you can use it even when the bozo in front of you has his
seatback fully reclined. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and claim that
without advances in speech or handwriting recognition, a laptop's footprint
can't get substantially smaller than this and still remain usable. You can't
get any smaller without shrinking the keyboard to the point where you can't
touch-type.

Based on the number of strangers who have come up to me in cafes and left
with Dynamism's URL firmly in hand, Americans will pay for small and light
when it is done right. And I have seldom seen products done more right than
this. I hope Toshiba changes its mind, because I'm not buying one of these
machines if I have to pay the $500 markup. But that's because I'm more
American than Japanese.

For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/