Toshiba's aims for the S3 are clear: It should be the most secure and durable mobile business PC available. It's also one of the first notebooks to comply with next year's rigorous RoHS environmental standards.

Our first impressions were good. While it's not the glitziest notebook, we've seen few that are more solid. All corners protrude to withstand impact and the cavernous 100GB hard disk sports both ligature motion sensors and cushioning should it be dropped. Further protection can be added by replacing the optical drive with an extra hard disk to mirror the first. Other touches include a spill resistant keyboard, a fingerprint reader and a time-delayed BIOS password to prevent thieves accessing to the system. All this adds up to a bomb-proof quality about it.

It's comfortable to use. The 15in 1400 x 1050 is crisp and clear and offers much desktop real estate. Viewing angles and colours aren't great but it's fine for office use and watching the odd DVD. The speakers look large and get reasonably loud but offer little bass and sound tinny. The keyboard is good though it's a tad rattly. Both a decent trackpad and nipple mouse are included.

It's powerful with its 2GHz Pentium M and 1GB of RAM and scored 0.89 in our benchmarks -- it will be running Office applications (and then some) for some time yet. The Geforce 6600 GO graphics allow for some gaming though you'll have to turn down detail settings as 17 fps in our game benchmarks shows.

Connectivity is good with three USB; mini-FireWire; Gigabit Ethernet; 802.11a/b/g; PC Card and Express card slots all being included. Other nice touches include the analogue volume dial, wireless power switch and legacy serial and parallel ports. The optical drive usefully supports 3x DVD-RAM and 2x dual-layer burning.

It's all topped off with Toshiba's useful quick-configuration buttons and applets which let you quickly join or switch wired or wireless networks, programme shortcuts and switch profiles.

The S3 certainly needs to be regarded as a mobile PC. At 2.4kg it's no ultra portable. Lasting only one hour 13 minutes and two hours 46 minutes in our intensive and light-use tests also hampers portability.

Finally there's the three year international warranty. Wherever you are in the world the notebook will be picked up and returned fixed for you. At over $4000 it's a hefty investment but it's certainly worth the money for businesses who want a notebook that won't need replacing for a long time to come.