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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 Toshiba Portege M200 was the second lightest tablet at just over 2kg. The main reason it's so light is because it doesn't feature an optical drive. It's only 100-or-so grams heavier than the ThinkPad but it is a lot larger.
The Toshiba featured a fast Intel Pentium M 1.8 GHz processor with 512MB of RAM that can be expanded to 2GB (compared to the ThinkPad's 1.5GB maximum). It comes with a large 80GB HDD that spins at 5400 RPM and an nVidia graphics accelerator with 32MB of dedicated graphics memory. So in terms of the main hardware specifications you get more with the Toshiba than you do with the ThinkPad.
The Toshiba has a 12.1-inch screen which runs a screen resolution of 1400 by 1050 which we feel is way too high for an LCD of this size -- text can be hard to read. When we set the resolution back to 1024 by 768 text became fuzzy and blocky so we quickly opted for its native mode. The brightness was good and the contrast was excellent but there were speckles on this screen as well.
The Toshiba features a 100-megabit Ethernet adaptor where all of the other units have gigabit Ethernet.
The LEDs that display the tablet's status can be found "twice" just above the keypad. Toshiba double up here, so you can view the LEDs in either tablet or notebook mode. It would be so much better if they could just put the LEDs on the LCD like everyone else. This tablet also covers the speakers when in tablet mode which does affect the sound quality. All the other vendors have front-firing speakers and play sound out from the side when in tablet mode.
In terms of performance the Toshiba was second fastest and on par with the Fujitsu. The Toshiba has a slightly slower CPU, but faster graphics accelerator which explains the similar performance.
Its battery lasted for four hours and 39 minutes, which was the second best, but still almost one hour less than the ThinkPad.
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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 .