Tecra M7

This page is a conglomeration, and slight revision of my posts regarding the Toshiba Tecra M7.

I also recommend reading the following review(s):

• http://www.tabletpcreview.com/?newsID=544 by “Da_Mavster”, Oct. 14, 2006

The first review of the M7 at TabletPC Review. Comprehensive, and overall positive.

• http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=632 by Andrew Baxter Nov. 14, 2006

This is a review of the new Lenovo Thinkpad X60. While not directly comparable to the Tecra M7, this review covers a lot of ground in regards to the tablet OS, using tablet notebooks in general, and has a ton of youtube videos that illustrate a lot of important features of tablets.

• http://kristopherjohnson.blogspot.com/2006/11/toshiba-tecra-m7-tablet-pc.html by Kris Johnson, Nov. 04 2006

Kris has some valid points as to the M7’s faults, though he still likes the Tecra. One that I agree with is that it is difficult to read the screen when it is on a desk in tablet mode, while facing it in landscape. Personally, I think the solution to this is a stand of some kind, however it would be nice if it just plain had a wider viewing angle.

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Topics Covered here:

• Laptop Config
• Warranty, Accessories
• Carry Case (Monolith)
• Keyboard Protector
• Out-of-the-box Usability
• Battery Life w/ the Slice Expansion
• Screen Durability
• Where do you put that reserve pen?
• Some pics of my M7 on Flickr + Stop Motion Animation

Laptop Config – Tecra M7

The breakdown of my www.Toshibadirect.com order…

• Intel Core Duo Processor T2500 (2.00Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB) – sweetness! I’m glad I’m getting a Core Duo, and kind’ve wish I could get a Core 2 Quadro, but I’d probably be waiting another year in order to buy that. Once those chips come out, it will probably make the Core 2 Duo tablets a lot less expensive, but then again, the main cost of these tablets isn’t the processor anyway.
• “Genuine” Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 – for all you MS bashers out there, hold back – Tablet Edition is actually the best OS out there for tablets at the moment in all aspects of pen integration.
• 512 MB x 1, 667MHz DDR2 PC5300 SDRAM – I intend to get a 1GB stick later, as they charge an exorbitant price at Toshibadirect.com for extra RAM)
• 14.1″ Diagonal WXGA+ Display (1440 x 900) w/ High Brightness and Wide View Angle – the largest size (inch-wise) display available for any tablet on the market, and the highest resolution (pixel-wise) for any display of this size inch-wise
• NVIDIA Quadro NVS 110M w/ TurboCache and 128MB dedicated graphics memory – according to reviews / online forums, mainly a graphics workhorse for rendering or photo manipulation, not games. This is the best video card available for any convertible tablet notebook on the market as of 10/04/2006.
• 100GB HDD (5400rpm, Serial-ATA) – I didn’t opt for the 7200 rpm since most online reviews / whitepapers are saying that there is no significant performance difference between 7200 and 5400 rpm drives, and in some case higher spin drives actually did worse. Definitely need 100GB too! I’m pretty cramped w/ the 40GB notebook I have right now..
• DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive – sweet!
• Atheros 802.11a/b/g wireless-LAN – because there seems to be waffling on which is better (Atheros or Intel), and I wanted to be different
• Bluetooth (v2.0) + EDR – because I want to pay an exorbitant mark-up for wireless devices that can communicate with an internal transceiver, rather than requiring individual transcievers plugged into all my USB ports.

Warranty, Accessories

• Toshiba Tablet PC Reserve Pen – fits into a little nook in a compartment that is easily opened, in case I lose the original full-size one..
• 3 Year Standard Limited Warranty – actually pretty decent. Covers wear & tear, and any shipping costs back and forth.
• 3 Year SystemGuard + ServiceExpress – covers any accidental damage (dropping it down a staircase, or maliciously running it over with a dump truck). ServiceExpress just makes *my* tablet a priority – guaranteed deadlines for service.
• Toshiba Slice Expansion 6-cell Li-On Battery Pack – because combined with the original 6 cell that’s supposed to give 4 hours, this theoretically gives a battery life of 8 hours! And it doesn’t requires a $250 separate charger to charge, since I can charge it along with the regular one while it is attached to the tablet. Yes, it costs $80 more than another regular internal battery, but that’s a lot less than an extra $250..
• Toshiba Keyboard Protector for Satellite, Tecra, and Qosmio – b/c, after all, who wants a dirty keyboard after 3 years of use? Protect your investment, especially if it costs upwards of $2k!

Carry Case

I have a Monolith (Size 2, black) that I ordered from http://www.TomBihn.com. It cost $52 ($45 + $7 S&H). It has met all of my expectations – easy to put in the M7 / take it out, sturdy on the outside, soft on the inside. I haven’t carried the M7 around in just the Monolith, since I typically am carrying my backpack as well, so I just put it in there. I also haven’t had any serious spills / drops to date, so I can’t say much about durability other than that it carries the appearance and feel of being so. Most of the reviews at TomBihn.com speak highly of the bag.

Keyboard Protector

I definitely have to recommend getting the $20 keyboard protector that Toshibadirect.com offers! It adds a nice tactile feel to the keyboard, and keeps it clean. This makes me a little less afraid of eating around the M7. I don’t have to worry about crumbs or bits of lint / dust getting in between or under the keys in places where I couldn’t possibly clean them out. And, if I should ever feel the need to resell this hardware, it keeps the keyboard in like-new condition.

Out-of-the-box Usability

I would definitely say that if you are a power user, the M7 is not usable out of the box. It requires some housekeeping before it will run smoothly. This will take a few hours. There are quite a few tutorials / forum posts on this topic, and perhaps sometime later I will put some direct links to them here. I will not duplicate those efforts, as it is largely a subjective matter of how you arrange your system / folder settings / etc.

Battery Life w/ the Slice Expansion

I find that I typically get 5 – 5 1/2 hours of battery life depending on how heavily I’m using the computer. Wi-fi on all the time + heavy processing for, say, rendering image alterations or something will definitely decrease the battery life. According to the official specs at Toshibadirect, the 6-cell alone is supposed to get 4 hours of battery life. So much for that.

I think it’s definitely worth the money to get the slice expansion battery – it adds a whole ‘nother 2.5 hours of portable life, and it doesn’t involve switching out anything, such as if you got another standard 6-cell. There’s about a $70 difference between the slice expansion battery and the standard 6-cell, but it’s worth every extra penny. It makes life simple for recharging batteries too – I don’t have to switch out anything, or get an extra battery charger that costs ~$200 in order to charge them up in a timely manner.

I suppose it’s not obvious, so I’ll say it here: if you completely drain both the primary and slice expansion battery and then plug it in, it will charge the batteries one at time – primary first, expansion second. It does not charge them both at the same time.

Screen Durability

I have found the screen on the M7 to be particularly durable. When I first got it, I was worried that I would scratch up the screen within a weeks use because I did not spend money on an expensive screen protector. I received the M7 on Oct. 11th – almost a month from now (Nov. 3rd). I use it every day, and there isn’t a scratch on the screen yet. Keep in mind, I take care to not scratch the screen – but as for normal stylus / tablet pen use, I am not particularly careful. I just write on the screen.

It should definitely be noted that you will need a good lint-free cloth, and possibly some cleaning solution, if you would like to keep your screen looking nice. I like using it in slate mode for taking notes, and I rest my hand on the screen quite a bit, so hand oils are something of a nuisance. It’s not a big deal, but something to keep in mind.

Shutdown prompt, Hibernate

Personally, I like to have the power button set to hibernate my laptop. So, when I want to shut down I typically have to use the “start > shutdown” prompt in order to reboot or shut down completely. I’ve found that when I don’t reboot the M7 after several hours of use (e.g., over the course of a day, possibly a couple hibernates in between), that getting to the shut down prompt takes an inordinate amount of time. Something like 2-3 minutes, though I haven’t timed it. It makes the computer unresponsive – you can still move the mouse, but can’t do anything with the computer other than bring up the ctrl+alt+delete prompt, and launch task manager. There is no obvious reason for why it takes this long to bring up a simple prompt.

It should also be noted that once the shutdown is initiated, this process also takes several minutes. Reboots are not quick.

Hibernate, on the other hand, is really quick. It is very responsive, and is capable of hibernating even while I am running very intensive processes that normally don’t like to be interrupted. It doesn’t skip a beat on resume.

I’m not quite sure why there is this disparity between hibernate and shutdown responsiveness, but my guess is that it is a Windows XP Tablet PC Edition issue. It might also have something to do with the loads of additional processes that run in the background for tablet utilities and hardware specific stuff, like the bluetooth stack and software controllers for some of the non-standard hardware buttons.

Where do you put the reserve pen?

It is not obvious where to put the reserve pen that you can order from Toshibadirect.com. I made this little Youtube video to clear things up a little:

Some pics of my M7 on Flickr + Stop Motion Animation

Just in case you want to see some pictures of the M7 “in the wild”, without the stock photography clean white background of official images, here they are:

…. and also an animation of these images turned into a youtube video…