By Xiao Ming Wu
01/03/2004
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,39017301p,00.htm

Shopping for a tablet is a little like packing for an extended camping trip: every ounce of creature comfort you throw in the bag weighs on your performance and endurance. The Toshiba Portege M200 offers a nice balance of features that lets it successfully walk the line between ultraportable notebook and tablet PC, and mobile technology, like hiking, is all about balance. Although the M200 lacks an internal optical drive, it comes bundled with a USB DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Toshiba's convertible notebook can swivel into a tablet and includes support for wireless, Ethernet, and dial-up networking. It also has one VGA and two USB ports, as well as a PC Card and an SD card slot. Although the M200 is more expensive than Fujitsu's LifeBook T3000, we feel it's worth it.

Editors' note: The Toshiba Portege M200 is also known as the Toshiba Portégé M205-S809 in the US. Advertised M200 units in Asia are not bundled with the external combo drive.

Design

The M200's no-frills touchpad lacks dedicated scroll areas and extra buttons.

Like other convertible tablets, the Toshiba Portege M200 has a swivel hinge at the base of the display that lets you flip and fold the screen into tablet mode. It's neither the biggest nor the lightest convertible tablet we've reviewed, but it successfully integrates a nice array of features into a decidedly svelte, ultraportable design.

We like the full-size keyboard, which makes for comfortable typing, despite the condensed form factor. The M200's no-frills touchpad lacks dedicated scroll areas and extra buttons, but it is responsive and configurable. The Portege M200 is also easy to control as a tablet. Its well-designed pen and sensitive thin-film-transistor (TFT) display make navigating and writing on the screen as easy as using the keyboard and mouse. We also like the spring-loaded pen-docking slot on the right side of the M200.

A modest array of ports and controls graces the edges of the M200. The back panel harbors a VGA port for an external display, two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and an RJ11 port for the tablet's built-in 56Kbps modem. The front panel contains a conveniently located volume wheel, microphone and earphone jacks, and an SD media slot. There's also a handy hardware on/off switch for the wireless adapter on the tablet's right side, which can help save your battery when you're not using the network.

Features

The external combo drive is optional for the Portege M200.

The Toshiba Portege M200 combines the full array of features you expect from an ultraportable with the functionality of a tablet PC. It lacks an optical drive though. The manufacturer offers external drive options which include DVD-ROM as well as DVD/CD-RW combo drives.

You can get the Toshiba Portege M200 in many configurations, but the standard components make it a high-performance tablet even in its most basic form. Bluetooth is a optional add-on. Toshiba's convertible tablet comes replete with an Intel Pentium M 1.5GHz processor, an Intel 855PM system chipset, and a Wi-Fi-certified Intel Pro/Wireless LAN 2100 802.11b adapter, making it a true Centrino. The basic configuration includes 512MB of memory in two 256MB modules, which unfortunately populate both of your available memory slots, making a future upgrade less convenient. Toshiba offers memory upgrades up to 2GB. The M200 comes with a 40GB hard drive, but you can also customize it to 60GB or 80GB of storage.

At 12.1 inches, the M200's TFT display is small, especially considering its 1,400x1,050 SXGA (Super Extended Graphics Array) resolution. Fonts and icons are predictably tiny, but the display's vibrant colors and wide viewing angle make it a pleasure to use. The display's pumped-up virtual screen real estate can come in handy if you work with high-resolution images, and the Nvidia GeForce FX Go5200 32MB is powerful enough to support small-scale video editing and Web design.

Performance
The Toshiba Portege M200 came in last place in mobile performance in this small test group. The system uses Toshiba's Power Saver utility for its power-management software, and we set the Power Saver utility to Normal when we tested it. As a result, since the Normal setting throttles the CPU to very low levels when the battery is nearing the end of its life, the system's performance was much lower than that of its peers. Both the Gateway M275 and the Fujitsu LifeBook T3000 beat the Toshiba by 23 points. If you're looking for a tablet with good on-the-go performance, consider the Gateway M275.

Battery Life
Thanks to Toshiba's Power Saver utility, which throttles the system's CPU to low levels to conserve battery life, the Toshiba Portege M200 lasts far more than three hours. Its 10.8V, 4,400mAh (48WHr) battery has a hand in this system's long battery life. However, the Gateway M275, with its 14.8V, 3,600mAh (53WHr) takes first place, lasting more than 30 minutes longer than the Toshiba. Although it doesn't have the best battery life of the tablets, nearly four hours of battery life is nothing to sneeze at. You can count on the Toshiba Portege M200 to give you lots of time to get your tablet work done as it was meant to be--on the go.

Service And Support
The Toshiba Portege M200 carries a three-year parts-and-labor warranty, which includes a one-year international cover for batteries. Telephone support is available for the life of the warranty.

The M200 comes with a useful, 76-page, printed resource guide. You also get a separate user guide on the accompanying CD, which largely reiterates the information in the resource guide. The company's Web site hosts driver downloads, FAQs, PDF files of the product documentation, and Web mail access to tech support.