Toshiba has been a long running leader in the notebook field, so its always interesting to see what it has to offer, if only to see what is the current state of play in the market place. Toshiba responded to the call for desktop replacement notebooks by submitting the Satellite Pro 4360 model, a heavy machine tipping the scales at 3.17kg and clad in the familiar Toshiba dark grey. This model boasts a Pentium III with SpeedStep running at 700MHz, which seems to be the CPU of choice for the sweetest mix between price, performance and power savings at this point in time.

The front of the notebook holds the floppy drive; the right side features the Toshiba DVD-ROM drive and port for the built-in V.90/K56flex modem, while the left side has two Type II PC Card slots, the power switch and audio functions like ports and a volume dial. The rear is inhabited with a serial, parallel, VGA, PS/2 and a docking port. A single USB port is hidden behind a hatch and there is an RCA jack for video out as well. The underside has one accessible hatch where there are two SO-DIMM slots for memory upgrades. There is also a release for the battery on the right side which was a nightmare to refasten into the body of the notebook.

Internal appointments include a 12Gb hard disk which should mean ample storage, and which appears to be a favourite capacity point amongst the other notebooks, and the Savage IX video chipset.

We found the technical side of the Satellite Pro 4360 steady, tried and true, but not cutting-edge. Maximum RAM fitted amounts to only 320Mb. Performance reflected a well-balanced system with a top three ranking in our PC Authority Benchmark suite. The 3DMark2000 Pro score was a disappointing last placing, for those that completed the test. At 3kg weight you wouldnt be wanting to use the Satellite Pro 4360 too far from a power point, but if you did, then the battery rundown we performed on it drained in a touch under 5 hours, reflecting Toshibas emphasis on this aspect of mobile computing.

The Satellite Pro 4360 sits in the mid- to high-end of the notebooks on show here in terms of price and performance. There is consistency as seen by our star ratings, overall a competent but hardly eye-catching example of the notebook builders art.