if you're looking for a portable desktop/multimedia center, look no further. although it's probably one of the heaviest notebooks out there at 9.9 lbs, you'll soon forget about the weight once you see the enormous 17" widescreen display. not to mention the blazing fast p4 2.8gHz hyper-threading chip and the 800mHz system bus. the dvd-rw is also a nice feature for home movie making and watching. because of the widescreen, it is able to house a full-size keyboard, which is always a plus when performing tasks that require lots of typing. the entire notebook is housed in a sleek, modern casing with a metallic blue outer shell, and silver metallic on the inside. it has all the ports you need, including an s-video out for connection to your tv, and four that's right, count'em four usb 2.0 ports for hooking up peripherals. it even has an SD drive for loading pictures from your digital camera.the harman kardon speakers, while a good idea, are a little on the "tinny" side, so the integration of a subwoofer would have definately rounded out the audio experience. battery life is a little on the short side, but what do you expect from something this powerful? i probably wouldn't recommend extensive traveling with this beast due to it's sheer size and short battery life (in addition to finding a laptop case that will fit it), but as a portable desktop going from room to room in your house, it should fit the bill just fine.
First, the Toshiba carrying case is the only one that really works. You can get them at CompUSA. Kensington has a small one but not enough room for all your stuff.
It's possible to get a virus almost immediately after going on line. Mine needed 13 Windows critical updates and 9 other recommended. Norton was no help as it was an XP flaw. I did my updates on a LAN system behind a router configured to block all the nasty ports. I recommend this procedure if you can get access to Cable/DSL with a multi-port router.
The only shortcoming I found is the touchpad sensitivity. It's way too high and there's no way to reduce it through software properties. Toshiba has updates for numerous things but not touchpad sensitivity. You can shut off the pad, Ctrl-F9, and use an external optical wheelmouse plugged into the side USB port.
These few problems will be solved so don't wait to enjoy the machine.I have had this laptop for two months and it is in general a fine machine. The big screen, accurate colors on the screen, DVD burner, and powerful processor make this a fantastic machine to write code/design websites/edit multimedia files on. The reason why i haven't given it a five star review is that toshiba will probably never release an updated video card driver for the geforce fx 5200 that is part of this laptop. Usually I manually install the driver update nvidia makes (as of now it is the ForceWare Rel. 50 Driver Download) to avoid lazyness of the company selling the machine/card, but since this is a wide screen machine with a rare resolution (1440 x 900), nvidia's generic driver doesn't work. After speaking with a Toshiba rep on the phone I was told that their offical policy is to not make updated drivers unless a MAJOR problem happens. This is crazy. Everyone knows that updated drivers make a huge difference in performance and quality of hardware (especially since the FX series of cards are new and I'm sure that in a year the drivers will need major updates), so it is irriatating to see toshiba make such a fine machine in general and not bother updating their drivers. Am I going to have to wait until Half Life 2 comes out (and chokes on old drivers), and everyone complains due to poor performance of the video card for Toshiba to maybe do something? Does Toshiba seriously expect me to ever buy anything they make again if this continues to be a problem??? (i'm going to say hello to alien ware, LOL) The funniest part about all this is that the stickers on this machine when you pull it out of the box advertise the geforce fx card for gaming.
Also speaking of the video card, why have 32 MB of RAM on it with no offical way of upgrading (i guess i could always ask yoshi on tech tv if there is a way i can mod this thing LOL)? This alone will probably make Half Life 2 unplayable at a decent resolution whenever it comes out.
If you are a Toshiba employee and you are reading this, show this to your bosses and show them that there ARE customers who actually expect their hardware to work as best as it can and if a company is too LAZY to ensure this they WILL look elsewhere when the time comes to buy a new machine (due to moore's law it will be sooner than later). I would be a toshiba fanboy for life if they just did the right thing on this issue since their hardware is of high quality. Ask your bosses why they don't want to support their hardware with new drivers. They may think that I will have to buy more hardware at a earlier time, but if I do, it definately won't be a toshiba machine.
Shame on nvidia for not supporting wide screens on their generic driver too! (but since it is a generic driver i don't really expect much) Would it really kill you guys to do this?...bad support from ATI on their Rage 128 (yes this a old school card) made me steer clear of their new cards and this incident isn't helping your standing with me right now either. You COULD pressure your OEM customers like Toshiba to do the right thing you know.
Another tip: whenever you buy a laptop or LCD screen at a store, make sure that there are NO BLOWN PIXELS before you pay for it or you will be stuck with it unless there are more than 8 (i even had the service plan)! If it wasn't for the DVD Burner not working right I would've been stuck with annoying blown pixels!this machine is one of the most awesome pieces of equipment i have ever come across...it is fully loaded...like buying a rolls royce with a ferrari engine...the 2.8GHZ processor keeps it humming...while the huge screen and RAM keep it kicking...i love it
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