Top-quality Toshiba T4600C

For a self-confirmed sceptic of portable PCs, long term use of a Toshiba T4600C for this review came as a breath of fresh air. Technology and a keen sense of best-of-breed thinking make it an outstanding product.
Not that there is any one exceptional feature or single overwhelming technical advantage enjoyed exclusively by this 486SL notebook PC over its competition. You could arguably demonstrate that Toshiba has come up with a candidate for mediocrity, at least compared to their usual quantum leaps. Contemporaries are already filling their low-end notebooks with advantages previously the domain of higher-end machines — rarely, however, do we see such quality.
Even the packaging is handled with quality. Toshiba have nested everything into one small carton, neatly partitioned. The documentation is extensive, with several volumes devoted to DOS 5 0 — standard at time of review but likely to change to Version 6.0 by the time you read this — the various drivers and Toshiba OEM utilities, operation and use of the machine
as well as its expansion capabilities.
The T46OOC itself is the nondescript-looking grey so beloved of PC makers. The unit measures 297 by 51.5 by 210mm (WHD) and weighs a modest 3.1kg. There is provision for two PCMCIA devices, a good trackball and an easy to use, roomy 82/84-key keyboard. The detachable nickel metal hydride battery pack, rated at two to five hours use depending on the type of work, and the 3 5in floppy disk drive make up the front panel.
Our testing disabled all power saving capabilities and revealed a battery life of 2 hours, 40 min from full charge to complete drainage running continuous disk accessing. This places the T4600C right up there for economy while in battery operation. The normal user would never need reach the dreaded finality of complete power-down. There are no less than four methods of enabling power saving.
Used in conjunction with the ‘auto-enabling’ feature — which allows power-off with applications still open without loss of data — the T46OOC has one of the most comprehensive power management option sets available. Power management options are configurable for each of the CPU, display and hard disk, and cold closing of the unit is enabled through a ‘hard RAM’ disk, a variation on a standard virtual RAM drive, where the contents of RAM are dumped to the drive for instant recall on power-up.
At the back there are the usual appointments in a serial, parallel, external keyboard and mouse ports, and the Toshiba 150-pin port for their optional DeskStation IV docking station. The T4600C tested came with 4M RAM and a 120M hard disk drive.
Lift up the twin-hinged lid to inspect the operating interface and you find a discreet liquid crystal display with all system options on display. The main screen is a beauty. Not as large or bright as the Toshiba display used on the IBM ThinkPad 700C — at this stage still the benchmark by which all active-matrix TFT LCD displays are measured — but the 240mm screen is eminently useable. Viewing from an angle is still restricted but this is no complaint. The Windows video drivers allow up to 256 colours on screen, glorious and vibrant.
In benchmarks, with all power management disabled and running the Windows 3.1 Smartdrive disk cache, the T4600C rates impressively. DOSMark came to 34.58, a significant performance score. The memory subsystem polled 5392.68, which was outstanding. The breakdown of the other subsystems were in keeping with the overall finish of the system, and excellent. The Graphics WINMARK polled 1831939 (using Toshiba’s supplied 640 by 480 by 256 driver) and the Real Disk WINMARK of 15283 means that the prospect of using the T4600C in a graphical environment like Windows is an enjoyable experience rather than something better left to a heftier, sedentary PC.
Of course, for all the beauty of a well-appointed brandname notebook like this, there is a price to pay: $8582 to be exact. Add the cost of some realistic expansion like a modem card, docking station, an extra battery and extra memory — especially if you take the conservative road and look to Toshiba supplying these items — and you’re in the $10,000 plus bracket.