Toshiba Portege 3500 - PIII-M 1.33 GHz - 12.1" TFT > Reviews > Toshiba Portege 3500 - Best of breed, but heavy

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Look & Feel	Good
Comfort & Portability	Satisfactory
Robustness & Durability	Good
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Robust, powerful, functionally superior to the competition .  All you could ask for from a tablet pc .
Disadvantages:	Can get hot, but nothing to worry about, battery life shorter than with other models (3 . 5hrs), heavier than the competition making it awkward for the true mobile user .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Over the past few months, I have been evaluating and rolling out tablet PC's across my organisation within the Health industry. My evaluation has covered the HP Compaq TC1100, the Motion M1200, the Fujitsu Stylistic ST4120, and the Toshiba Portégé 3500. What follows is a brief discussion of the Toshiba Portege 3500 which I hope will give users some guidance and prove informative.

Of all the tablet PC's currently on the market the Toshiba Portégé 3500 has the best performance of all the systems because it uses the Intel Pentium III-M 1.33 GHz processor and a fast hard drive. Perhaps as a consequence of the faster processor, the Toshiba is also the hottest and noisiest; it is the only Tablet PC I have used which utilises a case fan. Furthermore, it has the shortest battery life (3:05 versus 3:25 for the top-scoring Fujitsu). Unlike the other Tablet PCs, the Toshiba is a "hybrid" configuration that does not separate the display and processor from the keyboard as the slate and convertible configurations do. The hinge rotates between notebook and tablet modes. The operating system detects the change in orientation and automatically adjusts the screen, rotating from portrait to landscape mode or vice versa.

The Toshiba model is a bit heavier and not quite as comfortable to use as other models. Its stylus has a flat edge that takes more getting used to than the round pens of the others and its case doesn't have the rounded edges the others do. Because the keyboard is always attached, the Toshiba is quite a handful compared to the others. However, when you add keyboards and power adapters to the other models-their travel weight-they all weigh about the same, in the four to five pound range. The Toshiba includes valuable features such as a three-year warranty, USB 2.0, 60 GB/5,400 rpm hard drive and Compact Flash (CF Type II) and Secure Digital (SD) memory slots.

In summary if Toshiba could find a way to make the unit a few ounces lighter, it would be the perfect Tablet PC. Protective casing with straps/handles take away much of this weight issue.