Toshiba Portege R100

Weighing just over a kilo, the R100 represents just what a Centrino notebook should be: light, stylish and with a long enough battery to be truly portable. Using a 900MHz Pentium M processor and 256MB of memory, the R100 earned just 104 in Sysmark, but it is more than capable of office and web functions.

As it's only 18mm thick without its extra battery pack, Toshiba has not fitted an optical drive, but there are two USB2 ports that could accommodate an external drive. Toshiba has managed to fit a 40GB hard disk in the diminutive chassis.

There aren't many ports on the sides. Apart from the USB2s, there is a PC Card slot, headphone and mic mini jack sockets, as well as an SD slot, which have been been creeping into many notebooks recently. There is also a modem and an Ethernet port, and an on/off switch for the 802.11b Calexico wireless card on the right-hand side.

As with the majority of Toshiba notebooks, the keyboard really lets it down. Granted there is very little space to play with, but Toshiba keyboards tend to only have one Control key and move the Windows key to the opposite corner than normal.

Back on the positive side, the touchpad is a decent size, and while the screen and graphics chip aren't exactly games-worthy, it still produces an excellent image. Finally, battery life is excellent, lasting for just under an hour and a half without the extra battery pack, and a huge four hours, 20 minutes with it.

Contact: Toshiba 0870 444 8944
www.toshiba.co.uk

Specifications:

• Windows XP
• Intel Pentium M 900MHz processor
• 256MB memory
• 40GB hard disk
• Trident XP graphics chip
• 12.1in TFT
• 286 x 229 x 14.9/19.8mm (w x d x h)
• 1.09kg