Toshiba Tecra A2 P-M 1.7GHz

Toshiba has always paid attention to the styling of its notebooks, but the Tecra A2 is smart even by its standards. At first glance, you could even mistake it for one of Sony's VAIO series. Like some of Sony's offerings, the mottled silver finish feels plastic to the touch, but it will certainly attract admiring glances during a business meeting or train journey.

It's not just about looks either, as there's a lot here for your money. The first pleasant surprise is build quality; the whole construction is reassuringly solid - particularly given the relatively slim profile. At 35mm when closed, it will slip easily into a briefcase or rucksack, and at 2.7kg it's only just heavy enough to notice in your bag.

This is particularly impressive given the powerhouse components nestled inside. First up is a 1.7GHz 'Banias' Pentium M processor. This only has 1MB of Level 2 cache on-board, compared to 2MB from the 'Dothan' version, although we were still expecting quite a bit more than the 1.33 returned from our 2D benchmarks. That said, the A2 will still cope easily with office work, not to mention reasonably heavy-duty multimedia work. Memory is often the first area to suffer during cost-cutting, but Toshiba has thankfully managed to keep it at 512MB.

This isn't a notebook designed for 3D tasks though, with graphics handled by Intel's comparatively feeble 855 chipset. Gaming action will therefore be limited to a spot of Minesweeper or titles from the last decade - but this certainly keeps the cost down.

The biggest compromise of all is the 1,024 x 768 resolution of the 15in TFT. It's rather coarse by modern standards, although still a good example of its type. Given that most everyday office work revolves around email, web browsing or word processing, it's not a huge problem, but it will limit anyone who regularly uses large spreadsheets or indulges in digital photography on the move. DVD playback revealed a slight redness to skin tones and an extremely sluggish response time, but it's fine for whiling away the odd train journey. Just note that the lid isn't the sturdiest we've seen; this is one area where the IBM ThinkPad T41 (see A List, p44) offers more reassurance.

We had mixed feelings about the keyboard. You need to hit the keys quite hard in order to type successfully, but even the most forceful of typists won't notice any bending or dipping. There's a good depth of travel too. The layout has the traditional Toshiba foibles though. Our main gripe is the Windows key, as it's marooned at the top right rather than the bottom left - very annoying for people accustomed to using the shortcuts it brings, such as Windows+D to reveal the Desktop. Touch-typists may also find the tiny spacebar takes some getting used to, but we do appreciate the corner placing of the Ctrl key and the separate page navigation group. On the down side, the touchpad has an occasional tendency to make the mouse pointer leap around at inopportune times.

The other area of disappointment is the relative dearth of expansion options. It's not a huge problem for a business notebook, but two USB 2 ports are stingy by anyone's standards. Given the Tecra's slim dimensions, the parallel port is a surprise; these days we'd have preferred more USB ports. Also note the lack of serial or infrared. Other than that, there's just a single Type II PC Card slot. A headphone and mic-in socket are sensibly placed at the front right side, along with a sturdy volume control.

Communication with the outside world is via the integrated 56K modem, 10/100 Ethernet and 802.11b/g WLAN. We appreciate the inclusion of a hardware switch for the wireless, complete with indicator light, which helps with both security and the preservation of battery life.