Mobile business professionals who fancy media features in a business laptop might want to take a look at the Toshiba Tecra M8-S8011. It typifies a trend in which business laptops are converging with consumer models. The M8's glossy 13.3-inch widescreen, 4.5-pound chassis, and built-in optical drive are reminiscent of the Apple MacBook 13-inch (white). Although the 1.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 and 1GB of RAM are enough to run Windows XP Professional (which another version of this laptop loads), I would have liked a faster processor and 2GB of RAM on this Vista business system, given its $1,250 (street) price tag.
The Tecra M8-S8011's gunmetal-gray exterior is neutral. It's more interesting-looking than the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 Widescreen, yet it isn't as colorful as the consumer-oriented Dell Inspiron 1420 The Tecra M8-S8011's 4.5-pound frame is made for the road, as well as for those who don't want to sacrifice too much screen real estate. Its 13.3-inch TruBrite screen is large enough to handle big workloads and is a sight to behold when displaying videos and photos. Although the screen doesn't have a matte finish to fend off glare, like the screen on the HP Compaq 6910p, it's fine for office-related tasks. The full-size keyboard could stand a little tuning for better resistance, but frequent users will adjust to it without any difficulty. If the keyboard experience is critical, the Lenovo T61 Widescreen is the wiser choice because its keyboard is the best in the industry. Interestingly enough, the Tecra M8-S8011's touchpad is slightly recessed from the palm rests, which makes the touchpad feel smaller than it actually is.
Not too long ago, corporate laptops provided just basic features. The Tecra M8-S8011 is one model that gives you a much wider range of media capabilities. A 5-in-1 (MMC, MS, MS Pro, SD, xD) media card reader encourages you to bring your digital camera on the road. A FireWire port lets you connect with video camcorders and external storage devices. A 1.3-megapixel webcam is handy for videoconferencing through Skype, MSN Messenger, and other chat clients. The Tecra M8-S8011 also sports a dual-layer DVD burner, something we're seeing more and more on business laptops these days. Security features aren't overlooked, either. A fingerprint reader is wedged between the mouse buttons, and an accelerometer senses sudden motion on the 120GB hard drive and parks the drive's heads off to the side of the platters to keep the drive from danger.
I don't have a problem with this configuration if a business is running Windows XP Pro, because the 1.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 CPU and 1GB of RAM are up to the task. At retail, however, this system is sold with Windows Vista Business. With all of Vista's 3D requirements and the fact that this system loads integrated graphics, which suck up system memory, 2GB of RAM should really be the minimum. SYSmark 2007 Preview scores couldn't quite catch up to those of the Dell Vostro 1500 and the HP Compaq 6910p, both of which load 2GB of RAM and faster processors. Photoshop scores were in the 2-minute range. Scores would improve drastically with more memory.
To keep the weight down, Toshiba went with a 56-Wh battery, smaller than the Vostro 1500's 85-Wh battery. The 2 hours 51 minutes it scored on MobileMark 2007 is average for a laptop such as this.
Aside from the M8-S8011, two other models of the Toshiba Tecra are available: the M8-ST3093 and M8-ST3094, both of which are sold direct on Toshiba's site, with a variety of configuration options starting at $1,250. The Tecra M8-S8011 is sold only in retail channels. That's just as well, as you may want to try it out before swiping your credit card. At $1,250 it's not exactly a steal, and Toshiba really should have included more memory for Vista Business. Otherwise, this is a well-equipped mobile business laptop with media-centric features.
