Thanks, Colin.  Excellent and imformative post as usual.

Xyl says I should be able to put the thing in "presentation mode" or 
something to make it think it's driving a projector.  I need to look into 
that.
But once I got used to the odd keyb oard layout, I fell in love with the 
thing.  Keyboard in my oppinion has great touch.  Lou----- Original 
Message ----- 
From: "Colin McDonald" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: OT techra laptop


> hi:
> I have the toshiba techra M2.
> Great little machines indeed.  You are refering to the far right hand 
> button
> beside the power button and the other one touch access button.
> It is actually a display mode change button of some sort.  It turns the
> screen off for a couple seconds while it alters the settings or something.
> Anyway, there is no way to permanently disable  the laptop monitor.  Can 
> you
> imagine the tech support nightmare if they offered such a feature...people
> would turn it off either by accident or design, and then wouldn't be able 
> to
> use the machine because you'd have to get back into that menu or folder to
> turn it back on.  A one touch button would be great for that though.
> If you go into power settings, you can turn down the brightness of the
> display, and you can have it go dark after a certain idol time.
> Also, a screen saver would help to reduce a little bit of energy 
> consumption
> i think.
> The techra series is certainly not known for its long battery life.  I
> typically use the regular onboard battery as well as another one that goes
> in the modular bay where the CD drive would normally go.  I get about 5 to 
> 8
> hours depending on what i'm doing out of the two batteries together.
> One thing that you might consider is modifying a VGA cable in some way to
> make the laptop think it has an external monitor, and then automatically
> shutdown the laptop screen.
> I'm not sure if an external monitor being hooked up will allow you to shut
> off the laptop screen or not though.
> 73
> Colin, V A6BKX
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Lou Kolb" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 12:49 PM
> Subject: OT techra laptop
>
>
>>
>> Has anyone ever used a Toshiba Techra Laptop?  I've inherited my xyl's 
>> old
>> one and it's great in nearly every respect.  However, I'd like to be able
> to
>> save battery power by turning off the monitor most of the time.  Indeed,
>> there is a button which seems to do exactly that only it stays off for 2
>> seconds and fires back up again.  Any ideas on how to control this?  I've
>> looked at the power save settings but can't seem to figure out how to do
>> what I want with it.  Thanks.  Lou
>>
>>
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>>