When my beloved Toshiba Tecra 520 began to show its age after a busy 3+ years of heavy abuse, I knew any replacement would have a hard time matching the bright and clear display and huge-by-laptop-standards keyboard. Looking around, I saw the Tecra 8000 as having the potential to be a great successor. 6 months later, we are in bit of a love-hate relationship.

Toshiba has managed to keep the key features that have always made Tecras great and paired them with the latest in mobile chip technology [366 Pentium II] and a lot of memory [128 MB] and storage [8 GB]. For a laptop, it is super fast and features good graphics/sound support [including multiple options for piping out audio/video]. For a laptop as loaded as it is, the 8000 still manages to get decent battery life -- 2.5 hours on one battery and up to 6.5 with two batteries [the is key for working on cross-continent flights!]

The keyboard still provides good key spacing, layout [control key in the bottom left corner] and has good travel/response. I am a big fan of the "TrackPoint" pointing device [licensed from IBM] and was happy to see some subtle improvements in the composition of the little rubber piece -- it's more solid and grippy allowing for even better control than before. The TrackPoint could be a deterrent as I know of several people who avoid them at all costs. The display is up to the standards of brightness and clarity and at 14.1" provides a good amount of space for working.

The built-in 56K modem is fast and reliable and has an absolutely necessary feature for anyone who travels and/or uses the 8000 in a corporate environment -- digital line protection. After frying the internal modem in my 520 by plugging into a wall socket the bellman deemed safe, I was super pysched to see [and test] this feature.

Toshiba has finally fixed the problem of being able to hot-swap peripherals in the Selecta-Bay. Using an icon in the Windows "System Tray" one can view the status of what is currently installed and deactivate it for safe swapping -- all without rebooting the machine. Very cool and very helpful when you need to swap the CD-ROM for the second battery or the floppy [which can also be used externally].

What do I hate about it? Several minor but annoying things. The 8000 is too heavy. At 7-something pounds it weights at least as much as my 520 but does not have the more convenient, internal power supply of the 520. The external connector for the floppy drive [required when you want to use the CD-ROM and floppy simultaniously] is stashed behind a difficult-to-close rubber flap and is placed below the PC-Card slots. These two attributes conspire to make it harder then it should be to plug in the floppy. The case of the 8000, while cool looking in a subtle dark grey, does not feel as solid as my 520. Hearing the plastic joints flex as I remove it from my laptop bag makes me wonder how it will endure heavy use. Finally, the 8000 seems to suffer from more inexplicably system freezes than my 520 ever did. While I am sure that many of these can be attributed to the "quality" of Windows 95 and other software I have loaded, I have been told by more than one person that the high temperature at which it runs contributes to this. Hitting the rest button [conveniently located at the front of the machine] quickly clears this.

The summary another good machine from Toshiba with a couple annoying quirks.



Recommended: Yes