1. Toshiba's R400: The Cool Stuff

It's Sunday January 7, 2007. I'm sitting in my hotel room in Las Vegas playing around with Toshiba's Portégé R400-S4931 Tablet PC notebook. It arrived in Los Angeles a few days ago and I dragged it to Vegas so I could do a quick hands-on first look review for you in time for Toshiba's announcement at CES on January 8th.

Take a look at the R400. It's a beautiful machine. My hotel room picture really doesn't do it justice, but even the picture gives you a sense of what a looker this high contrast black and white notebook is. Now, here's the kind of funny part. When you twist the screen and fold it down to make a Tablet PC, most of the R400 is a nice, but monochromatic black. All of that beautiful white remaining is the small bit along the edges of the notebook. If only the entire twist-and-fold display of the R400 were transparent like those new fangled Aero windows in Microsoft's Vista, then the great white keyboard deck could shine through.

Speaking of Vista, as you can probably tell from the picture of the R400, the notebook is outfitted with Vista (Ultimate). The last sticker at the top in the lower right hand corner of the keyboard deck is the official sticker you'll find on computers that come with Vista. And, for you Vista purists, I haven't turned off the Vista Start Menu and Task Bar as I, shudder, did with the copy of Vista I'm writing about in my Windows Vista diary.

Toshiba claims that the R400 is the first notebook computer to implement Microsoft's Active Notifications (AN). Essentially, AN combines hardware and software (part of Vista) to instantly notify you when new email arrives or a calendar appointment is due. It can also show you email subjects and calendar details. AN does all of this while your notebook is in suspend mode. Obviously, it can't use the R400's display while in that mode. Rather it uses a small alphanumeric display. You can see it in the photo of the notebook. It's the small stretch of green on the black area on the front of the notebook. Here's a close-up view that shows the time and battery and wireless status. There is more display room to the right.

In addition to ever-present WLAN networking, the R400 is wireless wide area networking (WWAN) capable, using Verizon Wireless EV-DO. EV-DO is supposed to be able to run at bandwidths between 400-700 kbps. Both in Los Angeles and Las Vegas I've gotten performance that feels slower than that. Interestingly my Sony VAIO T350P notebook with Cingular EDGE WWAN built-in (maximum 384 kbps) is getting better performance in Vegas than it gets in LA and its performance feels better than the R400's Verizon EV-DO WWAN. But, this is mostly a matter of the networks in each city and signal strength in the locations where I'm using WWAN services.

Now take a look at the little black bump at the rear right of the R400. That's the notebook's secondary battery. It clips on the bottom of the computer. Each battery is rated at 4000 mAh, 8000 mAh combined. Until I figured out the cryptic installation diagram on the battery, I struggled in vain to mount the thing. My guess is that there will be some unhappy campers on this issue and I suggest Toshiba put together a clearer instruction sheet before releasing the R400 to the world on January 30th.

Finally, in April 2007, Toshiba will make an optional dock available that connects to the R400 wirelessly. This will eliminate those often awkward physical connections between notebooks and docking devices. Toshiba says the dock will support "wireless digital video". It will be interesting to see exactly what that means in terms of resolution and such.

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