Toshiba Tecra 9000

A good notebook isn't just a deftly balanced equation offsetting performance against battery life and features against portability. It is also about style, and should make you want to own it at an atavistic level, like a schoolboy lusting after a fast, shiny car years before he can drive.

The machine's designers have hit on the fundamental truth that big notebooks are not only totally impractical for travelling, but are also disadvantaged in the looks department. The Tecra is therefore a sensible size, and pleasingly portable. With its optical drive installed you are looking at about 2.45kg, which, though not feather-light, is at least manageable for most people.

In order to keep the size and weight down, Toshiba has made the Tecra a two-spindle machine, with a multi-purpose drive bay set into the left side of the case. Our version came with an eight-speed Toshiba DVD-ROM drive in it, but you can choose from a variety of options including CD-R, a combo CD-R/DVD drive, or a second hard disk or battery pack. As you'd expect on a machine of this quality, you can hot-swap drive modules with the aid of a simple software utility.

What you cannot do, at least not by default, is copy a file to floppy, since you don't get a floppy drive as part of the standard package. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this approach, an external, USB floppy drive will add about £65 ex VAT to the overall bill.

It's worth knowing that Toshiba has made the drive modules compatible with the new, less expensive Portege range, too. The cross-compatibility also extends to the £99 port replicator, so reducing the potential cost - and improving the logistics - of a large rollout of these machines within an organisation.

Now we're busily evolving from a wired to a wireless world, no high-end notebook worth its salt would be complete without some sort of wireless Lan capability, and the Tecra has this well covered. Depending on the model, you can have 802.11b, which will be a standard feature, or you can opt for Bluetooth capability as well. Our review machine had both, invisibly integrated into the overall design, with the antenna hidden away inside the lid.

It also has an SD (Secure Digital) Flash memory card slot, so, if you have the right peripherals, you can exchange still images, video clips and MP3 audio tracks with ease. If not, the notebook has a FireWire port, giving you another, more widely supported high-speed link to similarly equipped devices.

On the output side, the standard VGA socket is augmented by a Composite TV-out, and the port replicator adds a DVI digital video port for driving a digital flatpanel monitor. Less exotic but equally important interfaces include PS/2 for an external mouse or keyboard, a conventional nine-pin serial port and a pair of USB connectors. The usual pair of Type II PC Card slots is also present.

The 14.1in XGA resolution TFT screen is a little dull but otherwise free of any unevenness or dead pixels, and the keyboard proved to be comfortable, spacious and sensibly organised.

The Tecra is based on the new mobile Pentium III-M, which offers improved power savings over previous mobile SpeedStep CPUs. This certainly seemed to be borne out by the battery test results, which don't give the notebook much pause for breath at all and still ran for two hours 14 minutes.

Performance from the 1GHz PIII-M with its 512KB of on-die, full-speed Level 2 cache, aided by the Processor-M-specific Intel 830MP motherboard chipset, was impressive. The SYSmark 2001 benchmark gave the Tecra a rating of 110, which puts it ahead of some 1GHz PIII desktops.

The package is rounded off with the expected 128MB of SDRAM (this is PC133 thanks to the i830 chipset's fast memory support) and a 20GB removable Toshiba UltraDMA66 hard disk.

Overall, the Tecra's many strong points and the inclusion of a three-year, international carry-in warranty leave it looking persuasive if you want quality and are prepared to pay the necessary premium to get it.

Contact
Toshiba: 01932 828 828 www.toshiba.co.uk/computers