Over the past 21 years I've had a total of 12 different notebooks including Macs, Sony Vaios and Toshibas plus a brief and disastrous flirtation with Dell. The processing power & memory of tablets are both too feeble if you need to do serious work with real software; Macs are still excluded due to lack of compatibility with Sage Line 50 accounts software (besides other issues) so to replace my 2-year old Portege I looked again at the current crop of Toshiba notebooks.
The Intel Core processor in the Tecra offers a Goldilocks combination of VERY fast data processing even with high-demand programs, with long battery life and at 3.6kg slightly heavier than the Portege but still easily manageable. After 4 weeks it's proved fast and trouble-free, with >8-hours of battery life continuously working away from the mains.
As usual with Toshibas the Tecra is discrete and tasteful rather than flashy, with a dark aluminium casing. It has the usual integral mike and camera, good speakers with clear volume & tone as well as plentiful connecting ports for externals. I can never get the fingerprint-security facility to recognize even two of my finger scans as from the same person, so don't use it.
The Tecra boots in about 30 seconds and is then fully functioning. The screen color resolution is beautifully clear and sharp, windows7 one of the easier, more user-friendly operating systems MT has offered us.
Overall this Tecra is very good value for a mid-range machine with a lot of processing power and memory combined with lightweight, carry-in-your-hand portability and long battery life. I'd award five stars if it were 20% lighter, and 10% less expensive. But generally in a free market, with IT you get what you pay for.
I have only one experience of Toshiba's warranty service. With a previous machine I had a screen fault, and on that occasion they sent someone to collect and return it, repaired, after two days: very efficient and all FOC.
If you're going to get one of these I'd also recommend a good transport case for mobile working, and a `port replicator' (check them out) for your office.
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