The MPC TransPort X1000 is built like a tank, with a security system to match. A heavy blue unit with a silver lid and a fixed floppy drive on the front, it weighs 9 pounds including the power adapter. The well-constructed case uses thick, sturdy panels--instead of the thin plastic used by most notebooks--to cover the hard drive and other accessible parts. A fingerprint reader embedded in the wrist rest helps protect your data if you share your notebook with others.

Overall, the X1000 is well equipped and easy to use, though it may be a bit too bulky to take on the road. The big keyboard has a large touchpad, a scrolling rocker, and two handy quick-launch buttons. Connections range from the older parallel port to the newer FireWire port. To compensate for the few missing connections, MPC throws in a USB serial adapter and a PS/2 splitter. For quickly connecting the X1000 to peripherals, MPC offers two docking stations: a $59 USB unit that adds a serial port and replicates the parallel port, and a slightly better-equipped $99 replicator that attaches to rear pins and has more connections, including an ethernet jack.

MPC bundles several unusual extras with the X1000: a matching USB mouse, a network cable, and a weight-saving dummy module. Microsoft Office XP Business comes standard, too. For wireless use, our unit included the $69 optional Actiontec 802.11a/b internal MiniPCI card.

Three devices are available to fill the X1000's modular bay: a removable DVD/CD-RW combination drive (one of these accompanied our test system); the weight-saver module; and a secondary hard drive. The hard drives for the modular bay are available in 20GB, 40GB, and 60GB capacities and cost another $100, $140, and $259, respectively. The primary battery lasted only 2 hours on a charge, so a secondary battery would have been a useful option. (The main battery does have a built-in power gauge for keeping track of how much battery life remains.)

The 2.4-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M-equipped X1000 turned in average performance, earning a PC WorldBench 4 score of 110. (It's also available with slower (2.2-GHz) or faster (2.5- and 2.6-GHz) Pentium 4-M chips or with a 2-GHz Celeron chip.)

Our unit had 512MB of RAM filling both memory slots. (The same amount of memory on a single chip costs $75 more.) The X1000's RAM ceiling of 1024MB (1GB) is half that of other powerful notebooks, but it should suffice for most applications.

The X1000 is only fair as a multimedia machine. Its audio ports sit conveniently on the case front, but there's no hardware volume control. The unremarkable built-in speakers should suffice for informal presentations and for watching DVDs.

Little print documentation comes bundled with the X1000. Most of the information about the notebook is in a Technical Reference Manual preinstalled on the hard drive. We had a little trouble finding some things, but most of the important information seemed to be there.

Upshot: This all-in-one, fingerprint-reader-protected notebook has what it takes to be a good desktop machine.