Choosing a suitable laptop with which to outfit a small business is an important decision if you're an entrepreneur. If enterprise laptops are way over your budget and consumer laptops are not professional enough, a small-business laptop like the Toshiba Satellite Pro U400-S1001X is a viable, in-between selection. Exceptional qualities such as a bloatware-free configuration and a $1,049 (direct) price point could lower your operating costs down the road.

The Toshiba U400's design is what you'd expect to find in a laptop meant for a financial institution or an insurance company. Its gray exterior is reminiscent of the Dell Latitude D630—hardly an ugly duckling, but you get a clear sense that this is a business laptop. The Dell Vostro 1310 did a much better job with taking a neutral stance, sporting a shiny black lid.

The U400 tips the scales at 4.6 pounds, lighter than the 4.8-pound Vostro 1310 but a bit heavier than the Fujitsu LifeBook S6510, which weighs only 4 pounds despite its bigger (14-inch) screen. The U400's 13-inch widescreen is identical in size to the Dell 1310's, but the 1310's screen has a matte finish, which does a better job at warding off glare than the U400's glossy screen. Furthermore, the 1310 has two resolutions available—1,280-by-800 and 1,440-by-900—in contrast with the U400's lone 1,280-by-800 offering.

Toshiba needs to do a better job with the keyboard. I noticed significant flexing as I was typing, such that the left-hand side of the keyboard had some bounce to it. Even more annoying was this double-tapping feature on the touchpad (doing so makes the touchpad act like a left-click mouse button). Because of the smaller real estate of that area, there were several instances in which the mouse pointer accidentally jumped to a different location while I was typing.

Overall, the typing experience was unpleasant. For a much better one, I recommend the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 Widescreen. The area above the U400's keyboard is completely bare of any quick-launch buttons or any keys that control volume or movie playback. Although these omissions are hardly a deal breaker, be aware that both the Fujitsu S6510 and the Dell 1310 offer a river of extra keys.

The feature set was largely lackluster, though without any glaring omissions. A built-in dual-layer DVD burner is present, just like the ones in the Dell 1310 and the Fujitsu S6510. A trio of USB ports and a FireWire port connect to your peripherals. It used to be that a fingerprint reader and an integrated webcam were offered exclusively on consumer and high-end business laptops, but now they're becoming standard on inexpensive small-business laptops—both the Toshiba U400 and the Dell 1310 have them. It's fitting that internal cellular modems aren't available for the U400, since, unfortunately, Toshiba doesn't support them on any of its laptops. As with the Dell 1310, you have the option of getting a system free of all junk applications and trial software. This is something that should be offered across all laptops, not just small-business ones. Bloatware is a nuisance: It's a time-consuming hassle to remove, and it can make a laptop less stable, increasing downtime.

Although the U400's design and features are ho-hum at best, this laptop really shines on benchmark tests, thanks to its 2.1-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor. A "Penryn" CPU such as the T8100 is a rare find at this price point, particularly among small-business laptops: Neither the Dell Vostro 1310 nor the Fujitsu S6510 has one. The U400's native operating system is Windows XP Professional, which gives the laptop a performance advantage over a Windows Vista system. Going with the less-demanding XP explains why Toshiba was able to get away with only 1GB of RAM. You can upgrade to 2GB for an extra $100, but 2GB should be standard these days.

By contrast, the Dell 1310 offers different memory configurations, faster hard drives, and a discrete graphics option, so it has the potential to be a faster machine—though in a more-expensive configuration. Still, the U400 performed exceptionally well on SYSmark 2007 Preview tests. Its Overall score of 106 surpassed that of the Dell 1310 by 13 percent. Because it has a faster processor and runs XP, the Toshiba U400 delivered top scores on the video-encoding and Photoshop CS3 tests. Its score of 3 hours 28 minutes on MobileMark 2007 is more than satisfactory for its 52-Wh (six-cell) battery, although the six-cell battery in the Dell 1310 yields an extra 11 minutes (3:39). An optional eight-cell battery costs an extra $149.

The longer you study the offerings of the Toshiba Satellite U400-S1001X, the more you'll appreciate what you get for your company's modest investment. It performs very well for an inexpensive small-business laptop, and the "no bloatware" configuration is an attraction. The one thing I couldn't get past, however, was the unpleasant typing experience. From a design and features standpoint, the Dell Vostro 1310 is easier on the eyes and has a wealth of options that are unavailable with the U400. Features like discrete graphics and a choice of screens and hard drives would have been a welcome addition to the U400's arsenal.

Check out the Toshiba Satellite Pro U400-S1001X's test scores.

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