Toshiba Tecra M4

CNet Reviews Toshiba Tecra M4 and Says:

With a silver lid and a black base, the Toshiba Tecra M4 convertible tablet looks right at home in the boardroom. It is solidly designed and loaded with features, but its 2.9 kilogram weight is a killer if you want to hold your tablet like a clipboard for any length of time. If you want a decent laptop with tablet functionality, the Tecra M4 provides top-notch performance, a comfortable keyboard, and a large 14-inch screen. If you're looking for something to use primarily as a tablet, you're better off with smaller devices such as the ThinkPad X41.

Design
Measuring 328mm wide, 289.7mm deep, and approximately 38.4mm thick, the Toshiba Tecra M4 has the same dimensions as the Toshiba Satellite R15; both are significantly larger than the other convertible tablets we've seen, such as the HP Compaq tc4200. Again, the Tecra M4 is one of the heaviest tablets around and really appropriate only for carrying down the hall and on occasional trips.

The large dimensions do allow for some creature comforts, including a spacious keyboard and two pointing options: an eraser-head pointing stick (similar to the TrackPoint on ThinkPads) and a touch pad. As on the HP Compaq tc4200, the pointing stick and the touch pad each has its own mouse button, and the touch pad features horizontal and vertical scroll zones. With the Tecra M4 in tablet mode, you can navigate and write on the screen with a stylus that has the bulk of a ballpoint pen and offers a good pen-on-paper feel. We do wish the Tecra M4's pen had a tether to keep us from losing it, though.

Features
If you want to see life on the big screen, the Toshiba Tecra M4 is the tablet for you. While others may feature 14-inch screens, none can touch the Tecra M4's superfine 1,400x1,050 SXGA+ native resolution, which lets you view multiple windows while in landscape mode. Unfortunately, the screen is prone to glare and doesn't have as wide a viewing angle as we've seen elsewhere. With the Tecra M4 in tablet mode or laid flat beneath overhead lights, we had problems viewing the screen at a 45-degree angle.

Another advantage of the Toshiba Tecra M4's size is that it can accommodate a decent mix of ports and connections. In addition to the headphone and microphone jacks, you'll find VGA, S-Video, four-pin FireWire, infrared, and three USB 2.0 ports. There are also SecureDigital and Type II PC Card slots, and you can connect to the Internet via modem, Ethernet, or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. We like that the headphone and microphone jacks, the volume control, and a button to kill the wireless are easily accessible on the front of the machine. Small stereo speakers offer decent sound, but the lid covers them in tablet mode. The Tecra M4 lacks a fingerprint scanner, which would both provide security and make it easier to log on in tablet mode; however, it does have a Trusted Platform Module to help protect you from data theft. Like other Toshiba laptops, to keep data safe in the event that it's dropped, the Tecra M4 stops the hard drive from spinning whenever the tablet moves too fast. For tablets, which are often held on a wobbly arm and are more likely to be dropped, this feature is a necessity.

The Tecra M4 runs Windows XP Tablet Edition, and our test unit came with a good selection of software, including Microsoft Office OneNote, Microsoft Works 8.0, and Zinio Reader for reading digital magazines. It also came with Toshiba's very cool ConfigFree utility, which has a neat NORAD-like radar graphic that plots the signal strength (but not the location) of nearby wireless networks.

Performance and battery life
Toshiba has always been competitive with features and has put more power under the hood of the Tecra M4 than you will find in any other tablet. Our test unit included a very fast 2GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of quick 533MHz SDRAM, and a smoking Nvidia GeForce Go graphics card with 64MB of dedicated video memory (rare for a tablet). In CNET Labs' performance benchmarks, the Tecra M4 performed 24 percent faster than the similar-size Toshiba Satellite R15, which has a slower 1.6GHz processor. The Tecra M4 also handily beat the 1.8GHz Pentium M-based HP Compaq tc4200 and the Averatec C3500, which has a 1.67GHz processor. Only the new Acer TravelMate C310, with its 2.2GHz processor and 14.1-inch screen, looks poised to give the Tecra M4 a run for its money.

On the downside, the Toshiba Tecra M4's battery lasted for a mediocre 2 hours, 47 minutes. By contrast, the Toshiba Satellite R15's lasted 4 hours, 42 minutes, and the HP Compaq tc4200's lasted 4 hours, 56 minutes. If you don't need the DVD drive, you might want to consider swapping it out for an additional slim SelectBay battery, which Toshiba claims will give you a total of 6 hours of battery life (CNET did not test this battery).


Notebook Review Reviews Toshiba Tecra M4 and Says:

The Toshiba Tecra M4 is a very unique computer which I would describe as a jack of all trades. It's thin, fairly light, pretty powerful, and moderately priced. It basically falls into the category of thin and light desktop replacements. However what sets it apart from the competition is a turnable screen and a stylus. That's right, the Tecra M4 is also a Tablet PC which allows you to input notes and information through the stylus or even through speech with an integrated microphone array.

Tecra M4 specs as reviewed:
# Intel Pentium M 750 (1.86 Ghz)
# 256 MB (upgraded to 2 GB by buying memory through newegg.com)
# 40 GB Hard drive
# SXGA+ (1400 x 1050)
# Intel 802.11 b/g wireless
# DVD/Cdrw combo drive
# Windows XP Tablet Edition
# 6 cell battery
# nVidia Go 6600 TE
# free accesories after mail in rebate (ballistic case, epson printer, netgear wireless router)

Reasons for Buying
I'm going to graduate school soon so I began looking for a new computer. My old laptop was outdated and could barely keep up with web browsing, and I was tired of lugging its weight (about 7.5 pounds). However since this was going to be my only computer I wanted something with a decent screen size, and good power for directx programming or an occasional game. Thus I began looking at thin and light desktop replacement notebooks. These were some of the notebooks I considered:

# Toshiba Tecra M3
# IBM Thinkpad T43
# Asus z71v
# Asus w3v
# Dell Inspiron 6000
# HP L2000

During my search however I stumbled upon the M4 which was a tablet. It had everything I wanted in the thin and lights, and was within the same price range. After doing some research on tablets and checking them out in person at the local CompUSA, I realized that this was just what I was looking for. It would allow me to take notes easily in class eliminating the clutter of papers I have trouble organizing, and it would allow me to draw my own pictures for organizing my thoughts or create graphics for my programs. So I went ahead and ordered one from Toshiba Direct for about $2200 - 200(mail in rebate for the accesories)= about $2000.

Buying experience
The laptop took 10 days to build, and then another 4 days to arrive from China. The free accessories arrived earlier since there was no building time. During this time I called customer service twice to inquire about my order status, and each time within 5 minutes I was able to talk to a customer service representative. Both times they seemed quite competent in helping me with my order and both spoke perfect english. Thus I feel quite comfortable in being able to contact customer support should I need it.

Design and build quality
This laptop sports a simple sleek look with a black base and silver screen. I find the designe quite elegant. It won't draw too much attention at first, but when you twist back the screen it will probably turn a few heads. The chassis feels quite solid, and the only place I can find any flex is near the lower right corner of the keyboard near the arrow keys. There is absolutely no flex on the screen as I have been pushing on the back and have noticed no ripples whatsoever. Additionally there is a vibration sensor in the device that senses movement and stops the hard drive from spinning in order to prevent damage to the hard drive. My only concern with the design is with the rotation hinge since it has to support the screen. It seem solid enough, but I'm still somewhat worried about how well it can support the display as I'm used to conventional notebooks which support multiple hinges.

Buttons and Ports

I love the layout of the ports on this model as well. There are three usb ports, 2 of which are on the left side, and one of which is on the bottom right. This port is quite useful for plugging in a mouse, while the 2 on the left are perfect for me to plug in my dvdrw, and an external HD. There is also a firewire port on the left side as well so I have the option of using that for my dvdrw too. This notebook only has a SD card reader unlike others which I've seen which support 4-6 different kinds of flash cards. For me this is fine since my camera uses SD, but for others this could be a possible issue. There is also only one pcmcia slot, but since there is a gigabit ethernet built into the back it's not really missed. On the front is an on/off switch for the wireless as well as the volume control along with headphone and microphone jack. The microphone jack isn't really needed though since there are microphones built into the system of which I've located 2 (one in the front and one on the left side).