The optical drive is on the right edge, at the front, with a smart card reader nestling above it. Behind are three USB 2.0 ports that suffer from the common problem of being placed too close together. You may have trouble using two adjacent ports at the same time, depending on the size of your USB peripherals and/or their connectors. The modem connector brings up the rear on the right-hand side.
The left edge has a FireWire port at the front, and next to it a flash card reader that accepts SD and Memory Stick media. Above these is a single PC Card slot. Further back is a combined USB and eSATA port and a manual switch for wireless communications. The cooling vent sits towards the back of this edge, and behind this -- an unusual sight these days -- is a serial port.
The back edge houses the power connector, a VGA-out port and an Ethernet connector.
Performance
The M10-10I's Windows Experience Index rating of 3.7 (out of 5.9) is rather low, but that's due to the system's integrated graphics, which deliver the lowest component score, and, therefore, the overall score. This 3.7 rating was for 'gaming graphics' (3D business and gaming graphics performance). The next lowest score, 4.1, was for 'graphics' (desktop performance for Windows Aero).
The laptop otherwise performed well in the Windows Experience Index: 'primary hard disk' (disk data-transfer rate) scored 5.1, 'processor' (calculations per second) scored 5.4, and 'RAM' (memory operations per second) scored 5.7.
As far as battery life is concerned, Toshiba claims a maximum of 4 hours and 20 minutes (via MobileMark 2007). In our test, we set the M10-10I to its 'Balanced Power' scheme, turned Wi-Fi on and worked on it for as long as possible from a full battery charge. We played a music CD for the whole time, just to ensure the processor was kept busy. Under this fairly testing regime, we got about 2 hours and 15 minutes of continuous operation.
Conclusion
The Toshiba Tecra M10-10I is attractively priced, and offers a strong range of security and data-protection features. We're not so impressed by the lack of a webcam and mobile broadband, but these can be added -- at a price.
So long as you don't intend to carry this rather bulky laptop too often, its high-quality screen and excellent keyboard, plus a solid set of internal components, should make it a serviceable workhorse.
Additional editing by Charles Kloet
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