Toshiba Tecra M1

We also ran into an unusual problem with the M1's power control. For all notebooks, we test battery life using their highest possible energy-conserving settings. But both the Super Long Life and Long Life settings on this model dimmed the screen backlight to a point that made text extremely difficult to read; on the other Toshiba models we've tested to date, the screens were readable even on the longest battery life setting. Because the M1's Super Long Life and Long Life settings made the notebook practically unusable, we had to select the Normal power setting for its battery test. (Fortunately, even at that setting the M1 ran for an impressively long time.)

WHAT ELSE: This black-and-silver portable with a stylishly beveled front sports plenty of connection options, including parallel, serial, S-Video, and FireWire ports, plus three USB 2.0 ports. A useful switch located on the front turns the notebook's wireless networking on and off.

Unlike the Tecra S1's hard, crisp keys, the M1's feel a bit springy. But the layout is easy to navigate, and both sets of mouse buttons worked fine once we figured out that the eraserhead's right mouse button is embedded in a somewhat illogical place--the top frame of the touchpad. The M1 also offers two handy reprogrammable shortcuts, one of which is by default set as a "presentation" button that lets you toggle between the notebook's screen and a connected monitor. Flanking the buttons is the M1's optical sensor, a large translucent button that samples the ambient light and automatically adjusts screen brightness. We didn't notice a radical change in screen brightness, however, even when we used the bundled software utility to set the widest possible range. (We performed battery tests under normal office lighting.)

The M1 boasts loud, though flat-sounding, stereo sound that pours out of speakers jutting from the back corners of the keyboard. A thumbwheel on the front makes adjusting volume a snap.

Removing the hard drive takes little time, as it's located beneath a bottom panel and held in by only one screw. Upgrading memory takes more work. Our configuration had one open slot, and getting to it required prying off the plastic panel at the top of the keyboard with the flat end of a screwdriver, removing three screws underneath, and peeling back the keyboard to expose the compartment. Like many new notebooks, the M1 doesn't come with much print documentation, just a "quick tour" sheet that mislabels a couple of the parts. However, the Acrobat PDF manual preinstalled on the hard drive is very detailed, and it's easy to use thanks to index and contents sections that link to the pages they reference.

UPSHOT: If you need your next notebook to work all day away from an outlet, look to the Tecra M1 or to its near-twin S1.