Customer Reviews

Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC (1.33-GHZ Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When my company decided to spring for new laptops for engineers, I jumped at the opportunity to try something a little different. I'm a huge fan of Toshiba laptops in general (more reliable than a Dell, less expensive/pretentious than an IBM) and the 'think in ink' feature set of this baby seemed like a great meeting accessory.

Now, with three months invested, I like it for a totally different set of reasons than why I bought it.

First: It's tiny. And light. One of my new favorite past times is putting it in "tablet" mode, hooking into my apartment WiFi, and browsing Amazon and web comics. It's no paperback novel, but for a few hours of web browsing, it's great. I also use it folded up with a USB bar code scanner for scanning serial numbers on my current project.

Second: It's got a real battery! I think I was unfairly trained to the 30-minute lifespan of my previous (first Clinton-term era) laptop, but this baby gets every minute of the 3.5 hours advertised. The power saving tools are infinitely customizable and never intrusive.

Third: Limited peripherals will set you free. I don't think it's really designed to be your ONLY PC. No floppy. No CD. No DVD. No serial (I got an external USB-to-DB9 adapter since serial consoles are a big part of my job). No parallel. No big freaky docking station jack. Instead, when I'm on the road, I have a Kensington wireless/optical/travel mouse. When I'm at the office, I plug into power and a USB hub that connects me to my iPaq cradle, scanner, external CD drive, and a wired optical mouse. When I'm at home, I'm wireless to my home PC-- that does all my DVD playing, CD writing, and floppy reading for me.

Do I use the writable screen? Heck yeah. There are a lot of times it's easier to email a hand-sketch than do ASCII art or a five paragraph description. A picture's worth a thousand words, etc. Plus, when your lap's just not available, the tablet form factor is a touch of genius. I've passed it around in a meeting when I wanted to be able to update a worksheet on the fly. I'll flip the monitor around backward to show the person opposite me what I'm working on. Have I eliminated the tree-killing scourge of paper from my life? I'd recommend "The Myth of the Paperless Office" if you think it could.

So, if I had to have just one computer... this couldn't be it. But if you're a geek like me, and you're looking for a laptop to be king among your gadgets, toys, and existing computer menagerie, this is your baby.

This is a pretty decent tablet for the price. Toshiba managed to pack in a fair amount of processing power, and although small the screen is crisp and remains clear even after years of tablet use.

However, there were some bone-headed design decisions that hurt the usability of the laptop. One reviewer mentioned how they've positioned the off button. I shut the tablet off several times by mistake before I realized what was going on. How did that get past testing?

The worst decision, from the perspective of a techie, is that there is no way to boot from a USB CDROM or DVD. This means that unless you have a special PCMCIA-attached CDROM, you can't actually install any other operating systems.

A cute laptop, but obviously designed for the segment of the market that doesn't change any of the pre-installed options. For technical users, that's a killer, and even for non-technical users, the inflexibility hurts the resale value.

I was honestly supprised that this wasn't noticeably more expensive than a conventional laptop. This is really a full-fledged conventional portable (not desktop-replacement) laptop, but the tablet functionality is very convenient for taking notes (diagrams and such), and for reading electronic documents.

As for the comments about tech support, I wouldn't know. I've never had to use it, unlike Dell's friendly but frequently used support. That's a good thing for Toshiba in my book. Only problem I've had with this is a few more dead pixles than I'd like (3 or so).

I'm pretty sure this was designed by a lefty. Because if you are right handed and are using the tablet feature, your palm is forced to sit on the on off button. At least it restart fairly quickly. Also , it does not come with Onenote.

This computer brings many writing/typing fantasies to mind when you read all of the adds and publicity of the tablet pc in general. However, if writing on a computer screen will make you more productive than only typing start shopping. the 3500 did not meet my whimsical fantastic dream, but it has made me more productive and eliminate legal pads of note paper for the rest of my life.

Toshiba may make good products, but their support is the worst i have ever come across. They have lost my laptop for over a month now and do not care a lick about it. They're tech support team is in Turkey and they dont care a thing about anybody. They kept hanging up on me and refused to help me saying it will take some time. When i called back- no one knew anything and had zero updates. DO NOT BUY TOSHIBA PRODUCTS! Get a Gateway or Dell instead...two companies that actually care about their customers.