Toshiba Portege 3505

Easily the best-equipped tablet, the Toshiba Portégé 3505 does it all with style and technological flair. With a weight of 4 pounds and a thickness of 1.4 inches, the Toshiba is slightly bigger and heavier than some of the competition. Still, the Portégé 3505 sets the pace for convertible tablets with its flexible design, category-leading performance, and extras such as USB 2.0 ports, as well as CompactFlash and Secure Digital slots not found on other tablets. In spite of a few first-generation snags, the Portégé 3505 is ready for the rigors of business or the home.Looking at the black Toshiba Portégé 3505, your eye is immediately drawn to the silver hinge in the back, which sticks out like a big, shiny button. Like the Acer TravelMate C102TI, the Portégé 3505 is a convertible tablet. The hinge allows the screen to not only open and close but rotate a full 180 degrees side to side so that it can face toward or away from you. Need a standard notebook layout with the keyboard below the screen? No problem. Want a tablet to draw or write on? Just swivel the screen, then lay it flat. A small but well-designed lock keeps the screen in one position or another, so the display feels surprisingly sturdy.

	The Portégé in tablet mode.

Think of the Portégé 3505 as the schizophrenic of the computer world. You can scribble notes with the screen folded flat, open it up to type some details and description, then finally swivel the screen around to show a group what you've been working on. The more we used the Portégé 3505, the more we grew to appreciate this flexible design.

All those abilities translate, unfortunately, to a system that is the largest of the bunch. At 11.6 by 9.2 by 1.4 inches, the Portégé is one-third bigger than the Fujitsu Stylistic ST4000 and more in line with a standard ultraportable notebook than a tablet. It also weighs more than the Stylistic ST4000, but because it uses a tiny 7-ounce AC adapter, the total travel weight is only 4.4 pounds, half a pound less than the smaller, slower, and less capable ViewSonic V1100.

Compared to this group of six tablets, the Portégé 3505 has the best place to stash the writing stylus. Its handy storage place is next to the screen--not around the system's periphery. When you press the bottom of the pen, it pops out. Unfortunately, to keep the pen flush with the screen frame, it's flat on one side and doesn't feel as nice in your hand as a regular pen.

MobileMark2002 mobile performance test Longer bars indicate faster performance

Toshiba Portégé 3505 92  Fujitsu Stylistic ST4000 91  Motion Computing M1200 86  ViewSonic Tablet PC V1100 86  HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 59

 
The Toshiba couldn't match its top-of-the-heap performance stats in battery life, but it did stay on for a respectable 2 hours, 46 minutes. It might have gone longer, if it weren't for its 1.3GHz Pentium III-M, which draws more power than the lower-speed processors of the Fujitsu and the ViewSonic. The only reason the Toshiba's battery life isn't worse is because of its 10.8V, 3,600mAh battery, which goes a long way toward making up for the power-greedy CPU.

MobileMark2002 battery-life test Time is measured in minutes; longer bars indicate better performance

Motion Computing M1200 209  HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 198  Fujitsu Stylistic ST4000 180  Toshiba Portégé 3505 166  ViewSonic Tablet PC V1100 129

 
To measure mobile application performance and battery life, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's MobileMark2002. MobileMark measures both applications performance and battery life concurrently using a number of popular applications (Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator 6.0, WinZip Computing WinZip 8.0, McAfee VirusScan 5.13, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, and Macromedia Flash 5.0).

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System configurations:

Fujitsu Stylistic ST4000
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; 800MHz Intel Pentium III-M; 248MB SDRAM 133MHz; Intel Extreme graphics controller 48MB (8MB shared); Toshiba MK2018GAP 20GB 4,200rpm

HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe-TM5800; 232MB SDRAM 133MHz; Nvidia GeForce2 Go 16MB; Toshiba MK3018GAP 30GB 4,200rpm

Motion Computing M1200
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; 866MHz Intel Pentium III-M; 248MB SDRAM 133MHz; Intel 82830M graphics controller-0 48MB (8MB shared); IBM Travelstar 20GN 20GB 4,200rpm

Toshiba Portégé 3505
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; 1.3GHz Pentium III-M; 496MB SDRAM 133MHz; Trident CyberBlade XAi1 16MB; Toshiba MK4019GAX 30GB 5,400rpm

ViewSonic Tablet PC V1100
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition; 866MHz Intel Pentium III-M; 248MB SDRAM 133MHz; Intel 82830M graphics controller-0 48MB (8MB shared); Toshiba MK2018GAP 20GB 4,200rpm

Toshiba has a track record of offering comprehensive notebook service and support that is second to none in quality and variety of services available. There's 24-hour phone support, AskIris interactive troubleshooting, e-mail queries about problems, and an integrated Web site with no shortage of downloadable files that are organized by model or purpose. At present, the company still seems to be getting its act together on Tablet PCs, but we expect to see a similar level of support on these devices.

Another point in Toshiba's favor is that it's the only tablet maker to offer a three-year standard warranty.

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