Toshiba Satellite Pro 4380XDVD
Price: AU$6,230 (with 128MB of RAM).
Company: Toshiba Corporation
Ph: 1800 680 662
www.isd.toshiba.com.au
The Toshiba Satellite Pro was sent to the lab with only 64MB of RAM. We had to borrow some RAM from the Acer notebook to test the Toshiba. We were surprised that this was the notebook Toshiba chose to submit because the Tecra range of Toshiba notebooks seem to fit the high-end criteria a little better than the Satellite Pro. The Tecra range of notebooks ship with 128MB of RAM as standard and also include larger hard drives. They both, however, ship with Intel Pentium III 750 processors and 14.1in TFT displays.
The Satellite Pro is all grey and has a curvy modern look and feel about it, but it is also very big and looks to be heavy. The 4.4cm-thick notebook actually weighed in as the third lightest notebook at 3.091kg. The power pack adds another 514 grams.
The TFT was not supported very well and there is very little protection for it. The panel felt flimsy and when we applied some pressure to the back of the panel we noticed some pretty bad rippling. Picture quality was good but not as good as displays we had seen on many of the other brand name notebooks.
The keyboard feels really good. The feedback from the keys is very positive. There's a distinct click at the end of each key press and the positioning and size of the keys is good. The Toshiba has a trackball in the centre of the keyboard as well as four mouse buttons. Of the four mouse buttons there are two that are designed to be used as scroll buttons. The small left button scrolls up and the small right button scrolls down.
Around the back of the notebook is a composite TV out connector, docking interface port as well as all the other standard ports. The Toshiba shipped with a built-in modem but it did not come with a built-in network card. There's provision for a network card but Toshiba did not use it. Under the power button (on the left-hand side of the notebook) is a locking switch that prevents the notebook from being accidentally powered on. There's also a locking bar that will keep your PC Cards securely in place.
The Toshiba proved to be a very fast notebook. When we tested the Toshiba's overall performance in Winstone we saw it outperform all of the -clone" notebooks. The Toshiba was under-powered compared to the Pioneer notebook. In CPU Mark the Toshiba notebook was a little slower than the Pioneer notebook, as was the case with the Business Graphics WinMark. In Battery Mark the Toshiba just fell short of passing the three-hour barrier.
You could increase the RAM in the notebook quite easily. Two SO-DIMM sockets can be found underneath the base of the notebook. The Toshiba hard drive also pulls out quite easily from the right-hand side of the notebook. The Toshiba is quite a good notebook to say the least. It's not as robust as the IBM notebook and not as stylish as the HP. The Toshiba notebook is, however, much faster than the HP and a lot cheaper than the IBM. The biggest concern we had about this notebook was the lack of protection for the TFT.
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