Managing power management
Sharp's six-hour battery life estimate is a bit on the rosy side. I expect one could achieve six hours of run time with the screen cranked down to its lowest possible setting along with everything else in the system, but it doesn't happen often. I've regularly observed run times in excess of five hours, though, so this thing is no slouch in that department. Sharp's hardware engineers have done wonders.

Those hardware guys need to reach over their cubicle walls and deliver some serious wedgies to Sharp's software engineers for the state of their power management software. The premise of the M4000's power management isn't bad, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

Sharp's software offers three different modes

Here's a look at Sharp's Advanced Power Management utility, which controls the behavior of various subsystems based on the power mode the user has chosen. Every setting in all three of the modes is configurable, including some fairly innovative ones for "Max Mobile" mode such as the ability to reduce the screen refresh rate to 40Hz (you won't notice it when emailing or surfing) and the option to switch the desktop background to an all-white image (which cuts LCD power use). The "CPU performance" setting tunes Intel's SpeedStep dynamic clock speed and voltage throttling for the need at hand. At 100% in "Max Power" mode, the CPU stays locked at its peak 1.73GHz clock speed. At 75% in "Mobile" mode, SpeedStep works as expected, scaling from 800MHz to 1.73GHz in response to demand. And at 25% in "Max Mobile" mode, the processor stays locked at its lowest 800MHz. The user may switch between the three mode instantly by tapping the "mobile" button on the case of the laptop, opposite the power button.

Well, let me rephrase that. The user must switch between the three power modes using this button, because Sharp's software recognizes no difference between being on battery power and being plugged into a wall socket. It will not switch from one mode to the other when the M4000 is unplugged. Never mind that Windows makes this distinction automatically; Sharp's software will not recognize it.

Sharp's power utility knows no difference between battery and wall power.
Why, Sharp, why?

That means you've got to train yourself to be vigilant about pressing the "mobile" button in order to switch modes. The consequences of failing to do so are annoying. Either you eat up all of your battery time because the system was in "Max Power" mode while running on battery, or you come back after stepping away for a minute to find that your firmly plugged-in laptop has gone into hibernation. Ugh.

Worse yet, this software is apparently the laptop's only real means of managing system settings. The BIOS doesn't appear to have any hooks for responding to the function keys, so you can't change the sound volume, wireless network status, or the like during boot. Sharp's software has to load first. I assume Linux on this thing would be a nightmare, unless somebody's written a third-party app to manage these settings.

GMA900 goodness?
I didn't intend to play games on this computer when I purchased it, or I would have chosen something else. Its built-in Intel GMA900 graphics aren't exactly the stuff of gaming legend. However, the M4000 arrived around the same time that I got bit by the Guild Wars bug, and I eventually gave in to the temptation to at least try Guild Wars on it. The program would barely run at first, but once I added another gig of memory to the system via the SO-DIMM trapdoor—and thus added a second memory channel to the system—things were much better. Guild Wars runs and is playable at 1280x800 on this thing with reasonably good image quality settings.

LFG

I wouldn't expect to be able to play many of the latest games on this system, but at least is does have some basic DirectX 9-class graphics capabilities. And, hey, it's probably way more powerful than an Xbox.

A deal-breaker?
My biggest complaint about owning an M4000 WideNote isn't really about the laptop hardware itself; it's about Sharp's abysmal U.S. support website. Sharp has a download page for M4000 drivers, but as far as I can tell, it hasn't been updated since the product's release. I say "as far as I can tell" because it's almost impossible to know by looking. The site has zipped drivers and utilities for download, but there is no versioning information of any kind, no date for when the file was posted, and no revision history. All you get is a file, like "touchpad.zip". That's it.

Uh.. er... you're kidding, right?

Sharp's knowledgebase for the M4000 has two entries. One is the drivers page, and one is a page explaining how to extract the drivers from the zip file and run setup.exe. There are no break/fix scenarios, no compatibility notes—nothing.

I suppose it's possible Sharp has spectacular phone-based tech support, but the website sucks. As a fairly tech-savvy user, I've been able to navigate around the few problems I've had with the M4000 by downloading driver updates directly from component makers like Intel and Synaptics, but not everyone will be so lucky. Sharp's technical support really isn't in the same league with bigger companies like HP or Dell. The M4000 (and its successors) will never be a mainstream product here with this level of support.