Design and Ergonomics

The Toshiba Portege M100 is a joy for an aesthete’s eye with its slim form, stylish and elegant design, with the silver color of the magnesium-alloy case and the famous logo of Toshiba on the lid. The overall appearance of the model and of its every part follows the same consistent style.

When you open the lid on the top panel, you see a round Power On/Off button, a button for launching Toshiba’s Control Panel and a button for switching to the external monitor, a hole of the integrated microphone and two speakers at the sides (they are made in a curious “bulging” design).

The keyboard is made of opaque black plastic; the Latin letters are white and the functional keys which you press along with the Fn key are light-gray (that’s not very easy to discern) and are placed as a separate row above the main keyboard. A curious feature – the block of PgUp, PgDn, Home and End keys is split up so that the PgUp and PgDn keys are in the right part of the board, while the Home and End keys stand next to the Windows keys in the row of the functional keys. The Insert key is not quite appropriately placed next to the Space bar – you sometimes hit it accidentally. There’s also an integrated numeric pad. Overall, the keyboard is easy to type on and you quickly get used to this layout.

The Portege M100 uses a cursor-controlling device of the TrackPoint type, which replaces the ordinary mouse. It is a small joystick, nestled among keyboard keys and accompanied with four buttons (for serving as the two mouse buttons plus the wheel). I think a touchpad is easier to use than a TrackPoint, but you anyway get accustomed to it in the long run.

The 12.1” screen has a maximum resolution of 1024x768, represents colors satisfactorily, and offers large viewing angles and good brightness. You set up its brightness by using functional keys and the screen shows a symbol like a sun with rays whose sectors are filled depending on the setting you choose. At zero brightness, you practically don’t see anything on the screen, but text becomes visible in full darkness so you may use this mode for midnight reading.

The butt end of the lid is peppered with system status indicators. They are realized as green-highlighted symbols that light up depending on the system’s current function. They include:

• Power indicator (AC/DC);
• Power On/Off indicator;
• Battery charge indicator;
• HDD activity indicator;
• Optical drive activity indicator;
• Wireless connection indicator.

The indicator of the Caps Lock mode is implemented in the Caps Lock button itself – the key is highlighted with green light when pressed.