While many buyers are looking for the best performance possible in a laptop or notebook, others are looking for the best battery life. The Toshiba AC100 netbook answers the cry with an amazing 8 hours of battery life. Not only that, but its standby battery life is up to seven days!

How is this accomplished? First, the notebook runs on an Nvidia Tegra 250 chip, which uses very little power, and uses 8 GB of flash memory instead of a hard drive. While this might seem like a very small amount of storage, there is a SD/MMC card reader for additional storage on flash cards. With the lack of a hard drive and the use of memory cards for storage, the Toshiba AC100 requires somewhat of a re-thinking of what a laptop or notebook can be. Users wanting to use it as a full-fledged laptop may be disappointed, but those willing to think of it as more of a large-screen portable device should be quite happy with it. The machine weighs an impressively light 870 grams.

What is perhaps most notable about the AC100 is that it does not run Windows or Linux, but in fact, runs Android 2.1. Android is an operating system designed by Google, which was originally intended for smartphones. The stream-lined and light-weight operating system could be just what users need for such a compact machine, but only time will tell how well the Android operating system adapts from smartphones to notebooks.

The 10.1 inch screen has LED backlighting and a 1024×600 resolution. The machine is capable of HD video playback, and even has an HDMI port for connecting to an HDTV.

With so many untested features such as the inclusion of the Android operating system and the lack of a hard drive, it is difficult to judge how the Toshiba AC100 will be received by users. It requires a re-thinking of the notebook concept, and only time will tell if its innovations with strike a chord with buyers.