Pros: It's strange to 'back a screen size' from my old Satellite Pro's 15" screen, but the M400's 12.1" screen is very sharp and very usable. M400 is expensive (£1149 in UK pre-sales tax) and I wouldn't have paid that much if it came from my pocket. Handwriting-to-text conversion is astounding. Speech-to-text conversion is good but not as good as handwriting recognition - still worth using, though. Fingerprint scanner is absolute magic. On-screen inking is great; this machine goes with me to all my meetings (which is why I bought a tablet). Runs very cool (but see below re. fan). Battery life good (can't give you a running time (because I haven't measured it) but certainly the best of any portable I've used). Plenty of software included (too much? You have to reduce what is activated at startup). I added 1Gb RAM to the 512Mb supplied, and I would advise you to do the same. No laptop is perfect; this one isn't, but it's VERY, VERY good. Thoroughly recommended.
Cons: Not the best keyboard I have ever used (this is my 7th laptop and I've handled a lot of others). On the other hand, I use written or voice input for anything more than half a page! Fan runs ALL the time. Fan noise isn't intrusive in an office setting, but I took the M400 to an evening class, and there it WAS intrusive. The supplied Norton/Symantec security software fell over every 15 minues (the same happens on my boss's M400). The M400 was also locking for 30-60 zeconds randomly. Removed the Norton/Symantec software and installed McAfee instead. The falling over problem went away, the random locking stopped and the M400 boots noticeable faster too. Too much software is set to start up in the background at boot time. I repeat my comment above: no laptop is perfect, but this one is good.




