Toshiba Tecra M4

A large screen but not successful as a true tablet PC

The Toshiba Tecra M4 has the largest screen in this group test with a high resolution of 1,440 x 1,050.

Impressive though this is, the downside is that the screen shakes on its pivot when you type in notebook mode.

You get no such problems when you use the Toshiba as a tablet, but the 2.75kg weight means that it is impractical to carry the M4 around for extended periods of time – the best way to use the Tecra M4 is in tablet mode while it is on your desk.

Toshiba has included a long list of features including an internal optical drive and an array of microphones, aimed at VoIP (Voice over IP) telephony, rather than the voice-control feature of Tablet XP.

We had an issue with one of the Toshiba Easyguard features. The 60GB hard drive has a shock sensor that protects your data, but merely sliding the tablet across a desk causes a pop-up reporting that the disk head had been parked to avoid damage.

We cancelled the message and started to type and the message popped up again repeatedly so we checked the ‘Do not report’ box and were not troubled any more, although the protection continued behind the scenes.

To our mind this sums up the Toshiba’s mixed personality quite neatly. It’s a relatively small notebook that would suit the business users (Pentium M, wireless, Gigabit Lan, Bluetooth), but it has tablet features bolted on that raise the cost by £300 or so.

Unfortunately it’s not much use as a tablet, and you can get a far better notebook for the same price.

This article is part of a group test. All articles in the test are as follows:
Intro
Acer Travelmate C202TMi
Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P1510
HP Compaq tc4200 PV984ET
Motion Computing LS800
Toshiba Tecra M4
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Editor's Choice