Toshiba has had an excellent reputation with notebook computers for a number of years which is no doubt part of the reason why it has dominated the market for so long. About two years ago, Toshiba released the first of its Portege ultralight notebooks with a metallic finish, which helped to cement its position in this rapidly growing sector of the market. The Portege 3110CT is one of the latest in Toshiba's line of notebooks and continues the tradition of portability established with the first in its line.

Unfortunately, like many of the sub-notebooks in this month's Lab, it does not feature an internal CD-ROM drive and an external drive is only available as an optional extra. In this case, Toshiba offers a CD-ROM drive, at a cost of $726, that interfaces with the 3110CT via a PC-Card. An external floppy drive comes with the system that connects to the notebook through a proprietary port and the 3110CT also comes with a port replicator which connects via a separate proprietary slot.

The port replicator comes with an RJ-45 Ethernet port for connecting to a network; a PS/2 port; a USB port; a serial port; a parallel port; and a VGA port for an external monitor. To enhance this system's connectivity, Toshiba has included the Intel LANDesk Client Manager for easier network management. The 3110CT itself includes a foldout RJ-45 modem port for dial up access and is the same type of port introduced by Toshiba in its Satellite 2540CDT (see issue 20, page 58).

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Portege 3110CT is the battery technology employed by Toshiba. Even though the 3110CT is quite small and the battery connected to it is likewise small, though not as small as IBM's, it still managed to keep it powered for nearly two and half hours. The only systems that managed to last longer were the Pioneer 2000 Slimbook C366 and the TPG 7300.

One of the ways in which Toshiba accomplishes these power savings is by using the slower Pentium II/300 processor. As a result, the Toshiba Portege 3110CT was the slowest machine overall in our benchmark tests. However, as we've mentioned before, this is not the aspect most sought after in a lightweight notebook. Instead, you must consider this machine's connectivity and portability.

The Toshiba Portege 3110CT is a great ultralight notebook and would have pride of place with any budding road warrior although it won't win any
speed awards.