Tecra M4 P-M 770

Toshiba's 2.8kg Tecra M4 series is the company's third tablet PC release, and the Tecra M4 P-M 770 is one of the most powerful tablets we've seen to date.

A Wacom-designed pressure-sensitive digitiser is built-in behind the machine's 14.1in shock-protected display to provide a more accurate response. The display itself is protected by a thin protective polycarbonate panel, and natively supports a resolution of 1400 x 1050 pixels, driven by a 128MB Nvidia GeForce FX Go 6600 PCI Express graphics controller.

The Tecra M4 series features all the latest-generation Intel Centrino technologies. We tested the P-M 770, which comes with an Intel Pentium M 770 (2.13GHz) processor combined with 1GB of PC4200 DDR2 memory, a 5400rpm 80GBhard disk and a double-layer DVD burner that's swappable with a second battery or hard disk.

For networking, it has built-in Gigabit Ethernet, a 56Kbps modem, infrared and 802.11a/b/g wireless networking. Bluetooth is optional.

The Tecra M4 models support one Type II PC Card, include an SD card reader and are also equipped with three USB 2.0 ports, plus single FireWire, S-Video TV-out and VGA-out ports.

In addition to using magnesium alloy and ABS polycarbonate case materials, Toshiba has also shock-protected Tecra M4 models' hard disks and employed a motion sensor to temporarily halt the hard disks to prevent damage if dropped.

For security, Toshiba has also incorporated its Trusted Platform Module, and allowed for hard disk, BIOS and program user/admin passwords. A variety of useful Toshiba Tablet PC configuration and recovery utilities are also included.

For safe keeping, the Tecra M4's stylus slides away into the machine just next to the DVD drive.

The machine has just one built-in microphone, near the front, for speech recognition. Plus, there's , and buttons on the bezel. The button doubles as a display rotation button.

There's also a depressible iNav touch stick that brings up a unique "cross menu" with categorised icons for programs and settings.

A six-cell battery, rated for 3-4 hours, is bundled as standard. A standard one-year warranty also applies (you can opt to extend this).