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Photograph courtesy of Toshiba
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By WILSON ROTHMAN
The hottest thing for mobile professionals is Toshiba's new M200 series Tablet PC. Next to your turbo-charged desktop, a notebook with 1.5GHz Centrino processor and 12.1-in. screen doesn't sound like much, but the Portégé M200 weighs only 4.5 lbs., runs over four hours on a single battery charge and — thanks to internal sensors — knows which way is up.
The coolest feature of the tablet is that you can hold it any way you want. Rather than giving you just two options — left-handed and right-handed, say, or portrait and landscape — the notebook senses which side is up and reorients everything once you push the screen rotation button. Those sensors can do even more, like launch a program or the Start menu when you jerk the screen forward or rock it side to side. It's a little hard to master, but worth it.
The M205 isn't an entertainment computer. The DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive attaches to the side, and requires its own power cable, and the internal mono speaker is not what you'd call hi-fidelity. Nevertheless, it's a fine notebook, with a comfortable keyboard and an amazing screen. It seems at first that the 12.1-in. screen couldn't possibly take advantage of 1400x1050-pixel resolution, because it would make the icons impossibly tiny. But the control panel allows you to jack up the resolution while keeping the icons relatively large, very handy in this case, and to a very beautiful effect.
Truth is, this notebook contains almost too many secrets. One mystery in particular refused to reveal itself to me. The touchpad lets you do more than just navigate the screen. You can use it to scroll up or down, for example, by rolling your finger. However, it only seemed to work when it felt like it, and my attempts at finding advice on the subject, in the computer's manual or online, were fruitless. Ahh, sweet mystery of Portégé.
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