Toshiba Satellite T130

With no optical drive, there's room to space out the T130's trio of USB ports - one doubles up as eSata - and an array of connectors that will disappoint only DVI and ExpressCard fans. There's no DisplayPort, either, but the T130 does have HDMI.

With no optical drive to fit, there's plenty of room for the port array...

Wireless connectivity ticks the right boxes: 802.11n Wi-Fi and, should you need it, Bluetooth 2.1.

Before turning away from the T130's features, we have to again point out Toshiba's very extensive selection of bundled software which, anti-virus trialware aside, is one of the most impressive I've seen.

It provides a wealth of utilities for adjusting this, formatting that and monitoring t'other. And it includes its ReelTime UI, which lists files, apps and web pages you've accessed in chronological sequence. BulletinBoard, meanwhile, is a virtual alternative to the fridge door: a place to keep notes, frequently used files and so forth.

So, the T130 ticks all the right boxes for features, for software and for styling - how about performance?

...which brings no surprises, as you can see

As you can see from the PCMark Vantage charts on the next page, the T130 puts in a decent performance that shows the clear benefit of a dual-core processor over a single-core part, though interestingly, the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ's Pentium Dual-Core processor - reviewed here - isn't far behind the T130's Core 2 Duo.