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Contents 
Introduction
Fujitsu Stylistic T4020C
Lenovo ThinkPad X41
Acer TravelMate C310
Toshiba Portege M200
Hewlett-Packard TC4200
How we tested
Specifications
Editor's choice
About RMIT |
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The Acer C310 looks like a standard-sized notebook, but can also be used as a tablet. The Acer has the largest screen at 14.1 inches and came in the heaviest at 2.89kg. Because of its weight we can't really see hospital staff carting something so big and heavy around day after day.
If you're going to use this more often as a notebook rather than a tablet, and you want a very fast notebook, and you can't do without a large screen, and an integrated optical drive, then this would probably be your best option.
It comes with an Intel Pentium 1.73GHz processor, 512MB of memory, and a super-fast nVidia graphics accelerator with 128MB of dedicated memory. It also has a huge 80GB HDD and an internal DVD multi-format burner. The screen size was the largest of any of the units. Its native resolution however, was a bit on the low side, only 1024 by 768. We would like to have seen a resolution of something like 1400 by 1050 on a screen this size. The display quality wasn't too bad -- text appeared sharp and colours were nice and vivid -- but like the Fujitsu we were disappointed by speckles all over the screen.
You get the works in terms of connectivity -- wired and wireless network support (b and g only), three USB ports, FireWire, and S-Video.
Being a larger Tablet PC, the Acer has a little more area to rest your palms while typing. The keypad is pretty much the same size as the other keypads except for the ThinkPad, which was smaller. The Acer keypad is symbolic of the other Acer keypads with keys slightly curved -- it's probably not curved enough for most users to notice but it actually feels slightly better than the average straight keyboard. You will place much less strain on your wrists using this style keypad.
The Acer was the fastest tablet tested. Even though it didn't have the fastest CPU it featured a very fast graphics processor which helped it record the highest score in Winstone. In the battery run-down test it managed three hours and 25 minutes, which is a little on the low side but the Acer did have the largest screen and larger screens do use up more power than smaller ones.
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When it comes to high resolution (ie DPI, not total pixel dimensions) LCDs, I fail to see the problem. Just turn up the font size, or inform Windows that it has a high resolution display in the display control panel.
This should be done automatically by any OEM with half a brain. I would think that enabling "large fonts" is simply not that big a deal.
With that setting, you can get lots of screen "working area", plus readable, smooth, clean looking text.
There are a few broken apps out there that can't cope with non-default font sizes (this appalls me) but they're not that common, really. The worst problem with Windows its self seems to be somewhat ugly quicklaunch icons and the XP Pro login screen background image being too small for the dialog. An OEM could trivially fix both of these.
I'm one of the frustrated community of users who /want/ high res LCDs, because I like smooth readable text and the option to fit lots on the screen when I need to. It's frustrating to see reviews like this panning a laptop for having a good display.
I'd be happy to hear from you if you have any particular views on this - craig@postnewspapers.com.au .