Benchmark results
BAPCO MobileMark 2005 was used as our main indicator of system performance. The Tecra's battery lasted two hours and 46 minutes. Being under three hours is less than exciting, but not overly surprising for a large machine; of course you do have the option of purchasing a larger battery which should extend life by about 60 percent. The performance score was a very respectable 234. (A modern machine should score over 200 and we've not seen a score higher than about 270.)
The Sandra Pro File System test gave a result of 28MB/s whereas many of the machines we have tested in recent months have scored around 35MB/s. Memory bandwidth was estimated at 63 percent efficiency, which scored a little below what we might hope for -- we have seen machines with 1.83GHz processors perform a touch better. (The CPU is naturally only part of the story with memory function, but we tend to see a correlation between CPU speed and memory bandwidth.) CPU arithmetic scores came out at 24251 MIPS for Dhrystone ALU and Whetstone FPU scored 22768 MIPS and 6046 MFLOPS respectively.
Verdict
The Toshiba Tecra P4 strikes us as a good reliable machine with plenty of features. Despite its conservative appearance, there is modern technology inside providing solid performance. Toshiba's faith in its product is demonstrated by the three year parts and labour warranty with complimentary courier pick-up. Phone service is limited to weekdays, but does extend from 7am to 7pm. If only Toshiba would pay a little more attention to design issues such as physical layout and aesthetics. Overall the P4 represents reasonable value for money and is a very effective desktop replacement.
| Product | Tecra P4 |
|---|---|
| Price | AU$3,300 |
| Vendor | Toshiba PC |
| Contact | 13 30 70 |
| Interoperability |  |
|---|---|
| Good management software and communications, spoiled only by keyboard design. | |
| Futureproofing |  |
| Durable and has good options for expansion. | |
| ROI | |
| A worthwhile investment, if the keyboard doesn't annoy. | |
| Service |  |
| Great warranty, good phone service and online information. | |
| Rating | |
Enex TestLab is one of Australia's most experienced, independent technology test facilities. After more than 16 years with RMIT IT TestLab, Enex's founders acquired the business from RMIT in 2005.
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