The design of the Toshiba Tecra A10 is normal and not extravagant, and matt silver-grey look with the big Toshiba logo in the middle, which is shining silver. It is not really thin, but this is normal on Toshiba notebooks.With the first view everything appears good structured and you find the way immediately. In the upper row is the power button and besides this two different. One is for the "Toshiba assistant" with this I can fast access to the hardware of the Toshiba Tecra A10 and setup. The other button opens the Vista-mobility centre. Two small speakers are placed on the left and on the right are there also. The switch for W-LAN is on left device side besides the airing slits.
The touchpa is let in the plastic surface. Between the left / right click buttons of the touchpad is the fingerprint reader. In addition has the Toshiba Tecra A10 a TrackPoint between the G, H, B, N keys. It has two additional left/right mouse buttons, which we can find above the touchpad. I can use either pad or TrackPoint for mouse control. The keys react well, but the ENTER key is a little bit small in my opinion.
The battery sits very well and is fixed by a mechanical barrier, in addition. The Toshiba Tecra A10 seems to handle with the energy of the battery very carefully. With full usage and activated W-LAN remains more than 2 h. I do not know how this is when not using, the Tecra has power save mode.
Performance for applications
With 2.26 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 3 GB RAM suitable for all applications. Vista runs fast, just like all programs. With 3 GB RAM picture editing is also possible. Photoshop is working without problems. Merely with 3D applications as well as games you can not expect much in view of integrated graphic chip (Intel GMA X4500HD ).
Display
The display has a good brightness with acceptable contrast. Unfortunately, the colors are a little pale what might probably hang together with the contrast. The resolution from 1280x800 is for office and Internet as well as for multimedia enough. A plus of the display is that it is matt and shows no annoying mirroring. Also in bright environment the display image remains well readable.
Sound
The device has two simple integrated speakers with low-performance. They give clear heights; however, the depths do not exist. With very high frequency they incline immediately to overdrive and distort. This problem I know already from Satellite series, and when I use headset, than the sound is much better.
All in one, much nice Notebook for normal usage. If you want something for 3D you should better watch about different model with better graphic chip.
Specifications of Tecra A10 series
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8400
Processor Number : P8400
Processor Speed : 2.26GHz
Front Side Bus : 1066MHz
Memory Size : 2048MB
Memory Speed : PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz SDRAM
Display Size : 14.1″ widescreen
Display Type : TFT active-matrix LCD , WXGA+
Display Resolution : 1440×900
Graphics Engine : NVIDIA Quadro NVS 150M
Graphics Memory : 256MB GDDR2
Hard Drive Size : 160GB
Hard Drive Speed : 7200rpm
Optical Drives : DVD-SuperMulti drive
Audio : Standard stereo speakers, Headphone jack (stereo), Built-in microphone
AC Adapter : 75W (15V 5.0A) Auto-sensing, 100-240V / 50-60Hz input
Battery Type : Li-Ion (5100mAh)
Battery Life : Up to 2.96 hours
PC Card Slots : 1-Type II PC Card Slot
