Toshiba Portege 3500

There's something suspiciously familiar about Toshiba's Portege 3500. It's almost as if Scooby Doo and his pesky kids could take off its tablet PC mask and reveal - shock - Mr Portege 2000 underneath (see Labs, issue 91, p92). The keyboard layout is identical, it has the same touchpad and colour scheme - even the tally of ports (infrared, VGA and two USB) is the same. However, the 3500 isn't quite as thin, and it also has the more important addition of a silver swivelling hinge.

This, like the Acer TravelMate C102T's hinge, transforms the 3500 into a tablet PC. The top then clips into a little socket at the front, although there are no reinforcing side clips like the Acer's. However, the fact that it's a converted notebook soon becomes apparent when you try to use the Toshiba in tablet mode.

In terms of aesthetics, if you're using it in landscape mode you'll want the protruding hinge facing away from you for comfort. But then, the Toshiba logo's upside down - as are all the buttons. More importantly, if you have the tablet in portrait mode (which, let's face it, is more like a paper notepad), you end up with most of the ports and/or activity lights hidden under your hand.

Like the Acer, the Toshiba would have benefited from a rubberised grip along the edges to make it more comfortable in tablet mode - even a removable one would have been enough. Similarly, just having the activity lights somewhere on the screen's silver bezel would make things easier.

There are some good design touches though. At the top of the list is the full-sized pen, which even includes an eraser on the end, and clips into a sturdy holder at the side of the screen. The PC Card, SD and CompactFlash readers are all sensibly mounted along the top - out of harm's reach, along with the on/off switch for WLAN.

Wireless connectivity is ideal for a device like this, and with built-in WLAN you'll be able to browse the Web around the office. The integrated Bluetooth could enable you to dial up through a Bluetooth GPRS phone from almost anywhere. However, there's still a distinct lack of modern connectivity options - the pair of USB ports are only USB 1.1 for a start, but there's not even a FireWire port, and you can't help thinking there's plenty of room for them in the chassis.

The build quality is pretty solid, and there's no way you can affect the screen by pushing the back of the lid, although it tends to wobble a bit in notebook mode without any reinforcement. Even the keyboard is remarkably firm, with no bounce in the action and a satisfying click with each key-press. The cursor keys are kept separate at the bottom right, although the Windows key is mounted at the top right rather than the usual position, but at least it has one, which is more than you can say for some notebooks.

The main trick up the Toshiba's sleeve, however, is performance. Rather than opting for Transmeta Crusoe or ULV Pentium III-M chips, the Portege 3500 comes with a cracking 1.33GHz Pentium III-M, backed up with 256MB of PC133 SDRAM. This makes the Toshiba the fastest tablet we've seen, with an overall 2D benchmark score of 0.72, and this doesn't even mean less battery life. Our rundown tests of 84 minutes under intensive use, and 205 minutes under light use are still more than the Acer.

All of this makes the Portege 3500 a well-rounded, fast and fully featured notebook. Plus, the 12in screen makes for a larger tablet, which is still practical to carry around at 1.8kg, although it could do with being a bit brighter. Our only concerns centre on the fact that it's more of a converted notebook than a specific tablet PC, and it costs a lot more than a comparable notebook, especially with no optical drive. We advise to wait until tablets become more widespread, and more research has gone into ergonomic design before buying. If you're looking for a tablet PC now, however, then this is the best we've seen.

Author: Ben Hardwidge