CPU -- Intel
The Tecra is a little bland-looking when compared to many of the other notebooks tested with its "standard" footprint and champagne and charcoal colour scheme. The base of the notebook is very robust with little or no flex, but the display, on the other hand, flexes relatively easily and minor taps on the back of the display unsettle the image. At just over 2.2kg the Tecra is not a pain to lug around and is actually refreshingly light when compared to some of the large widescreen units.
The display at 14in is relatively small in this over-developed crowd and its native resolution of 1024 x 768 is nothing to get excited about other than to say that the large-screen fonts are easy to read even though they are a bit blocky. Maximum external resolution is a very impressive 2048 x 1536 thanks to the nVidia GeForce Go 6200 TE processor. The GeForce proved more adept in the 3D graphics tests than the integrated Intel processors of some of the other notebooks with the third-highest result in 3Dmark2001.
The keyboard layout is good and even the top row of function keys and cursor keys are quite large. Travel and feedback were also a little above average although colour differentiation was poor. Taking a bet both ways the Tecra has a track point and a touch pad but the track point buttons do not have the same degree of feedback as the touch pad, the latter also features convenient vertical and horizontal scroll areas. We did find at the default settings the Tecra's touch pad was not as responsive as many of the other notebooks.
The Tecra's speakers are located above the keyboard, there is a small rotary volume control at the front of the unit but even cranked up to full volume the audio is still not particularly loud but at least it is audible. The quality is quite good, not as tinny as some of the other units but neither is the sound as rich as the HP and Samsung for example.
The Tecra had 512MB of DDR2 memory and as there are no access panels under the base of the unit we must assume any memory upgrades, to a maximum of 2GB, must be located under the keyboard, not a user removable item. At 1.73GHz the CPU is almost clocked to Intel's current mobile limit and in most of the testing from raw CPU performance through to application benchmarks the Tecra performed admirably, it is worth noting that hard drive performance was one of the strongest amongst the group.
Toshiba rates the Tecra's battery life at 3.4 hours -- pretty close to the three hours, 46 minutes the Lab managed.
One area where the Tecra unfortunately excelled was producing heat. It had a peak spot temperature under the base of 45.6oC and even the air blowing out of the heat exchanger was a sultry 43oC.
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hmm lets see he said.......If you simply need a powerful notebook without too many bells and whistles, such as widescreen display, and more importantly you want to minimise the damage to your credit card then definitely look at the Acer TravelMate 4150 priced at just AU$2299. I believe this is a ridiculous price and I think this article does not do justice considering what has been reviewed. This guy is an intel spokesman!