We 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 conveniences: 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 accuracy 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 calibration.

The Tecra’s benchmark numbers are good for this class of notebook, although its performance pales in comparison with our zero-point rig—Dell’s latest XPS gaming notebook. This Tablet certainly 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 features, 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 damage 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 building 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 virtually indistinguishable from a standard notebook. 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 laptop when we get to where we’re going.
—Will Smith

Month Reviewed: December 2005

+ MONT BLANC: Tablet functionality without sacrificing screen space or performance.

- BIC: Only 512MB of RAM, includes Trusted Platform Module.

Verdict: 9

www.toshibadirect.com