Toshiba Tecra 9100

Toshiba's Tecra 9000 (see Reviews, issue 86, p161) was a great addition to the corporate notebook arena. It combined rock-solid performance and construction with fantastic battery life, and the new Tecra 9100 has followed in its footsteps by being physically almost identical. This is a good start, since we liked the Tecra's styling, with its silver exterior, black innards, as well as the distinctive sharp front edge and rounded rear.

Apart from the machine's general slick looks, we were also impressed by the robust construction, which used magnesium alloy for the body and lid. However, the new 9100 model has reverted to plastic for the case. When I asked about the reasoning behind this, I was told that the fast - and hot - new Pentium 4-M CPUs caused the underside to get uncomfortably warm, so the engineers switched back to plastic for better insulation.

Interestingly, despite losing the benefit of a thermally conductive case to help dissipate waste heat from the processor, the Tecra isn't saddled with an irritatingly noisy cooling fan. It still got moderately warm underneath, but not too much.

Like its predecessor, the Tecra 9100 is a two-spindle design, hence the relatively low weight of 2.45kg, and the moderately compact 310 x 269mm footprint. This is excellent news for those obliged to travel with a notebook, but there's one potential down side in the form of the missing floppy drive, although a USB drive is available for an extra £65.

Both the hard disk and optical drive are removable, so upgrading and replacing the disk won't present a problem, and you have some degree of flexibility when it comes to the choice of drive. By default, you get an eight-speed DVD-ROM, but there are other alternatives.

Toshiba offers a CD-RW, and even a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Drive modules are conveniently hot-swappable, so long as you remember to use the software utility provided to stop the devices. Sensibly, the bay will also accommodate a second battery pack or hard disk.

Fortunately, the Tecra stays backwardly compatible with legacy peripherals, providing both parallel and serial ports, along with a PS/2 port. The machine is also fitted with an expansion bus for a port replicator, which is compatible with Toshiba's lightweight PortÚgÚ range, as are the drive bay modules.

Some notebooks go in for 3D graphics, which is fine if you want them, but it's just an extra expense if you don't. So Toshiba went for a more modest graphics solution in the form of a 16Mb S3 SuperSavage IXC-166 in the Tecra - enough for business users.

The SuperSavage drives a standard-sized XGA 14.1in TFT panel. This size/resolution combination is tried and tested and provides the right compromise between detail and screen area, although I would have liked more illumination from the sidelights.

The Tecra's keyboard isn't especially large, but benefits from being carefully designed. As a result, everything is sensibly deployed, and all the keys are big enough to hit on target without thinking about it.

However, Toshiba has stuck to its guns on the trackpoint front. This may not please everybody, but Toshiba clearly has very fixed views on the matter in the Tecra arena. You'll have to go for one of the new PortÚgÚs or the Satellite 5100-501 (see Reviews, issue 91, p120) if you want a Toshiba with a touchpad.

Performance was disappointing, with an overall 2D score of just 3.09. This is below the 1.7GHz Pentium 4-M portables tested recently - the Dell Inspiron 8200 (see Reviews, issue 91, p120) managed 3.62 with the same processor and 256Mb memory allocation.