Toshiba Tecra M4 Melds Flexibility, Power, Portability

Solution providers have long selected specific manufacturers and models to meet their customers' portable computing needs. Yet VARs still must balance a vendor&'s features against channel programs and against pricing to pick the best notebook for a given customer.

Over the last year, the process of choosing an ideal notebook has become even more complicated, driven by a bevy of products aimed at different markets. Notebooks now come in all shapes and sizes, including ultra-light versions, tablets, desktop replacements, value models, widescreen models, media-centric platforms and so on.

Toshiba aims to bring some order to the confusion with its latest notebooks, which are divided into four product lines: ultra portables, tablets, media-centric and desktop replacements. But what's interesting about those product lines is the overlap in features. For example, Toshiba&'s Tecra M4 series combines tablet features with desktop performance and laptop portability.

CRN Test Center engineers recently took a Tecra M4-S515 for a few laps around the block and were impressed with many of the product,s capabilities. The M4-S515 is built around a 2 GHz Intel Pentium M760 processor and sports 512 Mbytes of RAM and an 80-Gbyte hard drive. The unit has a travel weight of around 7 pounds, making it portable for moderate travel, yet it still offers desktop-style performance.

The system&'s ultra-bright display is a 14.1-inch tablet touch screen, which can be twisted around and locked down to make the M4-S515 a large, powerful tablet PC. Resolution on the display is a crisp 1400x1050 pixels and comes across very crisp. Unlike the typical tablet, the M4 sports an optical drive, in the M4-S515&'s case that is a CD/DVD writer that supports all of the major standards (including double layer DVD+RW).

The M4 series also comes with a plethora of ports, including external VGA, multiple USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a V92 modem, a Secure Digital memory slot, an I-link port and a single PC Card slot. For wireless connectivity, the unit sports Bluetooth and 802.11g transceivers.

In tablet mode, users will be well-served by the integrated pen, which pops out of the side of the unit. Graphics are powered by an Nvidia GeoForce go6400, which provides enough muscle for most any video task. Out of the box, the system scored an overall speed rating of 342.4 on PassMark&'s PerformanceTest 6.0. The go6400 video card showed its strength with an impressive 70 frames per second when rendering medium-complexity 3D graphics.

All of this power does come at a price though, most notably in battery life. Typical use will drain the system down in about three hours. Of course, that time can be extended by enabling maximum power savings. Likewise, that time can be shortened by disabling the power-saving features.

Test Center engineers used PassMark&'s BatteryMon test suite to monitor power draw and found that the unit, without power savings, enabled draws about 18738mW of power, bringing battery life to around two hours and 15 minutes. With maximum power savings enabled, the system's power consumption dropped to 14536mW, extending battery life to over three and a half hours.

Toshiba is looking to re-engage the channel as evidenced by its latest channel program, which is broken down into three tiers: Silver, Gold and Platinum.

All resellers that sell up to $100,000 in Toshiba products during a TAIS fiscal half participate as a Silver member, the initial tier. Next up is Gold membership. VARs that sell a minimum of $100,000 in Toshiba products during a TAIS fiscal half are also be eligible to participate in the Monthly Reseller Rebate Program beginning the month following their achievement of the $100,000 in such sales and through the following TAIS fiscal half. The premium tier, Platinum, is for resellers that sell a minimum of $250,000 in Toshiba products during a TAIS fiscal half in addition to participation in the Monthly Reseller Rebate Program, which also makes them eligible to participate in the Marketing Development Fund Program during the TAIS fiscal half following their achievement of $250,000 in such sales.

The tiers offer different advantages. New Silver members are entitled to a 3 percent Quick-Start Program Rebate, and Platinum and Gold members have access to a Monthly Rebate Program. Exclusive to Platinum Members is the Marketing Development Fund Programs. Partners can see margins as high as 40 percent on select products and are offered significant discounts on demo products. A channel-specific Web portal gives partners access to additional collateral and marketing information.

Though currently there's no single notebook system that does everything for everyone, Toshiba&'s Tecra M4 is the first to approach that ideal for business users. Solution providers will benefit from the product's feature set and Toshiba&'s renewed commitment to the channel.