I have always been in awe of Japanese
engineering. One of the bigger IT investments it made was into a Toshiba
Satellite some years ago, that I never regretted. But besides the Satellite
range which was purported to be the mid-range work machine range, there was
also the thin and light premium line up called Portege that is not unlike the ultrabook
form factor we have today. I could never afford a Portege unit. But with
ultrabooks being the norm these days, what will Toshiba bring to the table,
especially after its many years of experience making ultra-light notebooks?
Light, with a bit of flex
Maybe this will speak to how many
ultrabooks I have handled, but the Portege Z830 was astonishingly light. Is
there anything out there as light as this? It was like holding a manila
cardboard in one hand, and I was pleased that Toshiba opted for magnesium alloy
as it is a solid, good-looking material that doesn't attract smudges. There
were some concerns expressed that the ultra book shouldn't flex because it
would compromise the components within it. I think that is a valid concern.
Screens that can flex are better than being rigid, because rigidity makes it
prone to breaking. But what about the ultrabook overall? Toshiba claims to have
moulded a unique honeycomb structure within the magnesium alloy chassis to give
this PC increased durability, rigidity and thinness. We wish we could put this
to test, but needless to say, we couldn't. However, the end result is a very
thin and the lightest ultrabook there Is out there, at the moment.
Real world usage
How does this machine fare under real world
stress? Not bad. It can handle work admirably, although there always seems to
be a bit of lag during browsing, as though there was a tiny bottleneck
somewhere that didn't allow all that Intel processor power and awesome graphics
power to just flow through and do its thing. I was also quite upset about the
battery power management. All I could squeeze out was about five hours, and
this with minimal usage - document processing, casual browsing - no, music
playing yet, or even movie playback.
Final thoughts
It can be unpleasant surprise to stow away
the ultrabook, and then to take it out some time later to discover that battery
life has dwindled down to 10-percent. That shouldn't have to happen. Especially
when there are so many, many other good things going for this Toshiba Portege -
real mobility, a good multi-gesture touchpad, a HD web camera, ample connection
ports in the form of three USB ports, HDMI, RGB, speedy Bluetooth, memory card
reader with support for even microSD of all formats, a multitude of proprietary
software for maintenance, multimedia, recovery and above all, a solid state
drive.
