As far as Tablet PCs go, the only indication that the Portege 3500 is one, and not a notebook, is the solid stainless steel and magnesium hinge centered under the display. This is the single point for rotating and flipping the screen over and down, and it locks into place with a satisfying 'snick'. It's a much better work-around than the hinge and locks used by the Acer TravelMate C100.

Inside, the 3500 is a powerhouse, with a 12.1in screen, 256MB of RAM (16MB of that shared for video), a 40GB hard drive and a 1.3GHz Pentium III-M processor. All of this is packed into a unit that weighs only 1.7kg (sans power brick) and it features some innovative cooling design (including heat ducting, watercooling and a new Lithium polymer battery). It's the most powerful tablet we looked at, and is rated to run around four and a half hours on one charge.

It also comes bundled with Symbol Commander, a configurable application that lets you control the tablet with stylus movements similar to the pen strokes used when writing Grafitti on the Palm. This should also be familiar to anyone who has played the game Black & White.

At print time, just prior to the official launch of the Tablet PC, Toshiba dropped its price for the Portege 3500 from an estimated $5,000-$6,000 to a highly palatable finalized $4,840. Considering the solid specifications of the unit, that's quite a respectable price.