MaximumPC 2005 12

reviewsTESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED

88 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2005

W

e really like Microsoft’s concept

of the Tablet PC. Whether we’re

taking notes in a meeting, web

browsing on the couch, or working in bed,

the Tablet, with its fancy touch screen and

handwriting-friendly software, fits the bill

perfectly. Unfortunately, until now, you had

to sacrifice too much to get those conve-

niences: Most Tablets are underpowered,

their screens are too small, and they lack

an optical drive, to say nothing of a decent

graphics processor. The Toshiba’s Tecra M4

finally delivers Tablet PC functionality in an

otherwise powerful mid-size notebook.

Toshiba made few sacrifices when

building this rig. The Tecra boasts an

Intel Pentium M 760 running at 2GHz, a

PCI Express GeForce Go 6600 TE, and a

double-layer DVD burner. Sure, we’d love

to see another 512MB of memory push

the total system RAM to a gig, but for the

price, we can’t complain too much.

Thanks to the 14.1-inch screen and a

1400x1050 native resolution, the Tecra

surpasses all the other Tablets we’ve

tested in terms of resolution and clarity.

And thanks to the integration of Wacom’s

market-leading pen-input technology,

the screen’s sensor delivers better accu-

racy and better pressure sensitivity, in

our experience. Your cursor goes exactly

where you touch the screen! This might

not seem like a

particularly difficult

task, but many

Tablets we’ve

tested in the past

exhibit spotty cali-

bration.

The Tecra’s

benchmark num-

bers are good for

this class of note-

book, although its

performance pales

in comparison with our zero-point rig—Dell’s

latest XPS gaming notebook. This Tablet cer-

tainly won’t replace a desktop rig for heavy

lifting—gaming or video encoding—but it can

hold its own in typical office tasks, as our

Photoshop and Premiere scripts show.

We dig some of the Tecra’s special fea-

tures, but not all of them. We like how the

Tecra’s integrated accelerometer detects

sudden motion and will consequently park

the hard drive’s heads to minimize the dam-

age from, say, a drop or rough jostling. You

can even set the Tecra to execute a specific

app when you shake the laptop or tilt it in

one of four directions. We’re less thrilled

that the Tecra is equipped with the Trusted

Platform Module (TPM) encryption chip.

While TPM provides a much more secure

way—via hardware—to encrypt any or all of

the Tecra’s contents, it’s unclear how the

proprietary part is going to figure into future

digital-rights management schemes.

There are tons of small features that

really highlight Toshiba’s expertise in build-

ing laptops. We love being able to choose

between the touchpad and the eraser

nub for cursor control, as each is suited

to different tasks. The integrated SD-card

reader makes it easy to pull photos from

your digicam, and the included speakers

sound pretty good, at least compared with

other integrated laptop speakers.

In notebook mode, the Tecra M4 is virtu-

ally indistinguishable from a standard note-

book. But, rotate the screen 180 degrees

and latch it down, and the Tecra becomes

a beautiful, full-screen, handy Tablet. At 6.2

pounds, it’s a tad heavier than most Tablets

we’ve tested, but we’ll happily tote around a

little extra weight to have a full-powered lap-

top when we get to where we’re going.

—WILL SMITH

Toshiba Tecra

M4 Tablet

A damn good laptop that does double duty

The Toshiba Tecra M4 delivers Tablet PC features with standard

two-spindle notebook performance.

TOSHIBA TECRA M4 TABLET

MONT BLANC

BIC^9

Tablet functionality without

sacrificing screen space or

performance.

Only 512MB of RAM.

Includes Trusted Platform

Module.

$2,030, http://www.toshibadirect.com

BENCHMARKS

Premiere Pro

ZERO POINT SCORES

Photoshop CS

HD T ach

Doom 3

3DM ark 05

Portable Gaming

0 1 0% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our zero point is a Dell Inspiron XPS, with a 2.13GHz Pentium M, 1GB of DDR2/533 RAM, and a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra.

59.8 (116.67%)

92 min 99

4,889

686 sec

394 sec

27.6 MB /s

49.1 fps

742 (-7.55%)

477 (-17.40%)

10.1(-79.43%)

1319 (-73.02%)

UNDER THE HOOD

BRAINS

BEAUTY

CPU 2.0GHz Pentium M 760

(915 chipset)

MEMORY 512MB DDR/533

LAN Intel B/G 2200 Wi-Fi, Marvell

88E8053 Gigabit Ethernet

HARD DRIVE 80GB Fujitsu MHT2080BH

OPTICAL Matsushita UJ-830S

double-layer DVD burner

VIDEO nVidia GeForce Go 6600 TE

(128MB)

DISPLAY 14.1-inch (1400x1050 @ 32-bit)

AUDIO CHIP Analog Devices AD1981B

LAP WT 6.2 lbs

CARRY WT 7.2 lbs

BOOT: 32 sec. DOWN: 12 sec.

11.38

"

12.75"

1.13

"