What a combo – 1.4 kilos in weight, a battery that lasts for seven an a half
hours and a built-in slot for your mobile data SIM card. A business
traveller’s dream laptop perhaps?
Perhaps not. The biggest disappointment after this tantalising spec is the
casing. The A600’s casing is made from what maker's Toshiba call magnesium
alloy - which sounds rather metallic - but what looks to me like flmsy
plastic. While Apple’s
new Macbook has ditched plastic for aluminium, Toshiba has gone for the
magnesium alloy in the interests of weight-saving. The A600-122 tips the
scales at just over 1.4kg – an ideal weight for a frequent business
traveller. The disadvantage of this is that the casing seems horribly flimsy
and I’m not sure how well 4mm thick screen will cope with the sort of
crashes and bashes laptops get while on the road. However, Toshiba assures
me that the casing can withstand considerable mishandling (you can see a
video of its Portégé
R500 being dropped and twisted here - it also has a magnesium alloy
casing)
The keyboard feels rather flimsy too and the keys wobble alarmingly under your
fingers, making you uncertain whether you have really pressed it firmly
enough. Despite the small screen, which often limits the size of the
keyboard, the keys are mostly full-sized, with the exception of the row of
function keys, the arrows and the PG UIP and PG DN keys.
At the top right of the keyboard, there are two special function keys – one to
access Toshiba Assist, which gives quick access to a number of services as
well as help and support, and the other giving access to various laptop
settings, such as display brightness, volume and battery status.
The trackpad buttons are woefully small, made worse by a "metallic"
surround containing indicator lights for hard drive activity, wireless and
battery among others.
The 12.1 inch wide TFT screen uis fine, if not particularly sparkling. Many of
the A600’s rivals have gone for glossy glass screens and the matt one the
A600 uses seems comparatively drab, although this will help damp down
reflections if you are using it in direct light.
Scanning the ports of the A600, the one of the first things that catches the
attention is an eSATA port for connecting an external hard drive. The
advantage here over USB 2.0 (which it also has) and Firewire ports (which it
doesn’t) is a faster data transfer speed – useful if you regularly back up
your entire laptop hard disk onto an external drive. It also doubles up as a
USB 2.0 port with the clever trick of working even when the laptop is in
sleep mode, allowing you to charge up your mobile phone or other device
without having to fire it up.
A built-in SIM card, giving you access to high-speed mobile data networks, is
one industrial-strength feature of the A600. The Sim card slot is nicely
tucked away behind the battery – there’s little space on the external casing
in any case thanks to the multitude of connection options. 3G connections
are handled through pre-installed Wireless Manager software, which is easily
set up. Signal strength is shown on a taskbar icon and the manager window
shows current up and download rates.
Battery life is really impressive – up to seven and a half hours in theory,
although in heavy use this drops down to more like four or five hours.
The spec
Dimensions: 286 x 223 x 29.9mm, weight: 1.46 kg, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
SU9300 1.2GHz, 2048MB RAM, 12.1" widescreen XGA (1280 x 800), DVD-RW
SuperMulti drive (Double Layer), 250GB hard drive, 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N,
built-in HSDPA slot, SD card slot, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x eSATA/USB 2.0 Sleep and
Charge slot, 1 ExpressCard slot, battery life up to 7h30min (Mobile Mark™
2007). Fingerprint scanner.
The hype
They say: “The Portégé series demonstrates a perfect balance between function,
style, weight and ultra-portability.”
The reality
We say: "It’s more of an imperfect balance, with weight and
ultra-portability strongly outweighing the other two."
The bottom line
£1,102.85 including VAT and shipping from Toshiba
The verdict
On paper, the A600-122 has plenty to recommend it to business travellers – its
ultra light weight and built-in high-speed mobile data access being the two
main ones. However, I am not convinced by the magnesium alloy casing. I
suspect that an elbow jab from a Ryanair stewardess would easily hole its
exterior. If you have taken one on the road, drop me a line to tell me I'm
wrong.
The roadwarrior rating
6 out of 10
