Toshiba Portege 4010: Businesslike, professional, and cute
Written: Oct 26 '02
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Pros: Very light and compact. Outstanding battery life. Bright screen. Quiet operation.
Cons: Rather sharp leading edge cuts into wrists
The Bottom Line: Great computer if your company wants to buy it for you.
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| pageclot's Full Review: Toshiba Portege 4010 (PP401U-02J927) PC Notebook |
Summary:
I use the Toshiba Portege as my primary computer at work and at home. Through my employer, I've used probably more than a dozen laptops over the last 10 years, ranging from the 25 pound IBM with a plasma display to this Toshiba Portege 4010. On the switch to this model, I gave up my quest to have the most powerful computer in my company, having given up 66 MHZ of processing speed in my drop from a Tecra 8200 operating at 1 GHz.
I also gave up a few inches of screen width, about 10 GB in hard drive space, and the ability to run two monitor "sessions", and about 3 pounds of weight.
On the whole, not a bad trade-off.
The details:
Form factor:
The Toshiba Portege 4010 is not the smallest Toshiba available for sale in Canada and the US. The Toshiba Portege 2000 series is about 1.5 pounds lighter, but sacrifices more than I was willing to give up in usability (the CD-DVD/RW and DVD drives were external). It's thinner, and narrower than most laptops, and where my Tecra had to be shoved into my old Levenger laptop case, my Portege can fit with room for a small binder and lots of loose leaf papers, plus the power adaptor and a bulky external trackball. The keyboard appears to be about the same size as most laptops, with some odd key configuration compromises caused by the narrower body (the HOME and END keys are in the upper right hand corner, and PGUP and PGDN have been moved to the right of the cursor arrow keys.). Following a trend started a few laptop generations ago, there are ALT keys on both sides of the spacebar for people who eschew the mouse.
The case has a rather sharp leading edge that sometimes digs into my wrists when I'm typing. I do know that I'm not supposed to rest my wrists on the laptop when I'm typing (according to my typing teacher in Grade 9, Miss Soper, the fingers are to hover over the typewriter keyboard home row), so maybe it's Toshiba's way of saying "Get those wrists up!". Over time, with millions of keystrokes, I expect the plastic to wear down.
The techie stuff:
The technical details of the Portege's operation are pretty standard, although surprisingly robust in such a small package. The 30 GB hard drive is a little smaller than you can get in a larger laptop, but adequate for most people, including myself. I have the standard 256MB of RAM. You can upgrade I believe to 1 GB of RAM, and I've been told that this improves performance somewhat, especially when working with large Excel spreadsheets or Powerpoint presentations. My laptop came pre-loaded with Windows 2000 Professional, which caused me some problems. I was experiencing very long reboot times, and whenever I shut down, my laptop told me I had a "Driver_Power_State_Failure", did a memory dump, and then refused to shut down unless powered down manually. I traced the problem to my external USB trackball (the Logitech Marble Wheel), and downloaded a new driver for it from Logitech's site. Ever since, I've had no bootup or shutdown problems.
You have many options for a CD-ROM type drive, when you order your computer. You can have a standard CD-ROM, or a DVD-ROM, or a CD-R/W drive. You can also get a CD-R/W/DVD combo, but this costs more than buying separate CD-R/W and DVD drives, so we bought the separate drives, and most of the time, the CD-R/W drive sits on my desk at home, because I don't burn that many CD's.
The Portege 4010 comes with built-in hooks for wireless operation, and there's a switch on the front leading edge that can turn it on or off. I've never used the wireless capabilities, never having stayed in a hotel, or been in an airport or office that offered a wireless network. I don't think my computer has been configured to take advantage of it in any case, but if you have such wireless access, the Portege is supposed to be able to take advantage of it.
In a break with the past, the Portege has no serial or parallel port. If you have a scanner that uses a parallel port or a printer that does not have a USB connection, you will have to buy an adaptor that converts parallel to USB, an expensive proposition (I was quoted $80 Cdn in an office shop). If you use a lot of peripherals that call for a USB connection, the two USB ports on the back of the Portege will likely not suffice, but I'm told that getting USB port adaptors is not expensive, and can increase your USB capacity. The Portege also comes with the standard two type II PCMICIA slots, built in modem and LAN connections, infrared port, sound input/output jacks, an external monitor connector, a firewire connector, and a SmartDrive adaptor for data cards that use that protocol. And an AC power connector, of course. Note there is no circular mouse or keyboard connector, so you'll have to use a USB connector for that as well.
Using the Portege:
Typing on it:
Typing on the Portege is, for the most part, like typing on any other laptop keyboard. It's quieter than most laptops; almost quiet enough to take notes in a meeting without drawing attention to yourself. I noticed that I am still (4 months into ownership) getting used to where the delete button is. I hit the Alt key next to it quite a bit. I don't hit the caps lock button as much as I used to, so they must have made it smaller. The CAPS LOCK button now has a small green LED on it, helpfully telling you whether it's on or off. For touch typists, this is pointless, because your fingers generally block the view of the CAPS LOCK key, but Toshiba's heart is in the right place.
Battery life:
Excellent. With the Tecra 8200, I was getting 45 minutes from a battery charge. I would put a DVD on when I started my drive to work, and it would conk out about halfway through Bullitt, or a third of the way through Godfather Part II. The Portege is good for the whole movie, and I have used it on and off for a full day's worth of meetings without running out of battery charge. The official word is that the battery will last 3.5 hours, but your mileage will vary, depending on how much you use the hard drive, and your power settings. The smaller display and lower processor speed must play a part in boosting the battery life.
Lugging it around:
It's a dream. I don't miss the 2 extra pounds I gave up when I gave up the Tecra. I was glad to get back a few inches of desk real estate. The case of the Portege is a silver colour, and grippy enough that you don't have to worry about it sliding out of your fingers when you pick it up.
My Portege has gone through a few airport X-Ray machines, and it had no effect on its operation.
Noise:
There is very little fan noise with the Portege 4010. My acid test for this is running Genome at home. With the Tecra 8200, running Genome at home on AC power, the internal fan would run all the time, which was actually better than having it run part time, because the sound of the fan spooling up and then turning off was enough to drive you insane. The fan was loud, however.
With the Portege, I barely know it's on. In most cases, the fan isn't required. I believe that the lower powered Pentium III mobile chip produces less heat, requiring less cooling and a smaller fan, all contributing to lower weight. It's a pleasant computing experience.
The Oooooh factor:
On a scale of 1 to 10, the Ooooh factor for the Portege is right around an 8.5. An Apple Titanium would be a 9.2, and a standard Tecra would be about a 6. These are highly subjective figures, but I certainly got more attention at the office from my shiny smaller Portege than I did with my Tecra 8200.
Value for money:
It's hard to support paying more for this computer, when you could get, for the money, a more powerful laptop, or two more powerful desktop computers. If you travel a lot, it might be worth the premium you pay. As with any computer purchase, you'll have to resign yourself to the fact that this computer will be mostly obsolete within 18 months or so. I'm counting on being able to use the Portege 4010 with our existing application suite for at least 2 years.
Overall:
Ever since the software problem with my trackball driver has been fixed, I've been delighted with the operation of the Portege 4010.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 801-900
Screen Size: 12 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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