While this year’s CES was choc full of announcements, here’s the dirty little secret about the Consumer Electronics Show: Very few of the items we saw last week are actually available for purchase this week, and some will never make it to market it all. So while the new Toshiba Mini NB305 netbook which got a spec bump from a single to a dual core Atom processor isn’t exactly the mot exciting new product around, it’s nice to see that it’s now available for purchase, less than a week after it was announced.
The laptop has a 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 dual core CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a 6-cell battery and Windows 7 Starter Edition.
It’s available from Newegg for $379.99. That’s a little pricier than some other Atom N550-powered netbooks on the market, but Toshiba’s Mini line is known for decent build quality, a large touchpad and large mouse buttons, and a comfortable chiclet-style keyboard. Personally I’ve never been a huge fan of the two-tone color scheme, where the lid doesn’t match the keyboard. But that’s just a matter of taste.
You should think about doing a CES round-up — the most exciting / interesting of the products you saw there, divided into those that are likely to actually come out soon and those that are simply “technology demonstration” or vapourware.