Toshiba shows ultramobile PC concept

Toshiba has been demonstrating a concept design for a new ultramobile PC. It doesn't actually have a name, and we shouldn't refer to it as a UMPC because it could end up using Windows, Linux or something else altogether, but we have to concede it's one of the most promising designs we've seen in this area.

We normally balk at anything without a physical keyboard, but the Toshiba ultramobile concept has some cool tricks up its proverbial sleeve. First of all there's a 127mm (5-inch) touch-sensitive screen, which is compatible with gesture controls. Stroking your finger in an upwards motion against the screen launches a Web browser; stroking right to left brings up an on-screen shortcut menu for launching common applications, and stroking right to left makes it disappear.

The ultramobile concept also features an accelerometer, so you can navigate through documents by tilting the device left, right, up or down. The system works surprisingly well, but if you don't fancy that, you can always bring up a virtual, on-screen representation of a keyboard or mouse trackpad. They're no substitute for the real thing, but we'd moan if they weren't part of the feature set.

Specs-wise, Toshiba plans to use an Intel ultra-low voltage CPUs, 1GB of RAM, and a solid-state disk drive. You also get an SD card slot for additional storage possibilities, Wi-Fi, a USB port and a charging dock. Here's hoping it gets a release at some point in the next year or so. -Rory Reid

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