Toshiba Notebook
& Laptop Reviews
This website gives you all the best deals
from the web. We would like to provide you reviews of the products we advertise
so that you the customer can decide what best suits your needs. We recommend
these third-party reviewers:
Toshiba's entry into the budget mid
size category, the Tecra A8 line starts at just AU$2,035. Our fixed configuration
review unit, the Tecra A8-0HV041, incorporates a decent feature set and
the latest-generation components -- including an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
Competitively speaking, the same-sized Lenovo 3000 N100 can be configured
with similar components for less than the Tecra A8, but the Lenovo has a
previous-generation Core Duo processor. Another competitive model, the Dell
Latitude D820, costs more for similar components, though it also offers
a sweeter feature set that includes a Trusted Platform Module, higher-resolution
screen, and more ports. Though larger businesses would appreciate (and be
willing to pay) for such extras, the Toshiba Tecra A8 is ideally suited
for individuals and small businesses who want a simple, workhorse laptop
that doesn't cost a lot of money.
Features
The Tecra A8's ho-hum grey-and-black case isn't likely to attract jealous
stares, but its sturdy construction should be a boon to business users.
Two thick hinges support the display, and the shock-absorbing chassis and
hard drive protect the machine from everyday knocks. Weighing 2.9kg, the
Tecra A8 isn't really light enough to carry home every day, but it will
easily make the trip to the conference room down the hall. Its case measures
368mm wide, 268mm deep, and 36.9mm thick -- almost identical in size to
the Dell Latitude D820 and a little smaller than the Lenovo 3000 N100, both
of which have the same size display.
The Tecra A8's 15.4-inch wide-screen display
features an average 1,280x800 native resolution and a matte finish. It doesn't
seem as bright and colour-rich as the glossy displays found on other entertainment-oriented
systems. We did appreciate that there were absolutely no screen reflections.
The display size is great for working with two documents side-by-side or
with many-columned Excel spreadsheets; movies look pretty good on it, too.
Though the two speakers above the Tecra A8's keyboard are passable for listening
to recorded speech, music sounds tinny and becomes muddled at high volumes.
Typing long documents on the Tecra A8 is
comfortable enough (we wrote this review on it), but we were surprised Toshiba
didn't give it a slightly roomier keyboard. A two-inch space to the left
of the board is dedicated to just three buttons (power, a button to launch
Toshiba's help and configuration utility, and a button for quick access
to brightness, volume, and other settings); why not place those buttons
along the top of the board and stretch the keyboard out a little? That said,
the keyboard feels extremely sturdy and the keys offer just the right amount
of resistance. Our biggest complaint is that Toshiba keyboards deviate from
the standard layout, placing the Windows key on the upper-right side of
the keyboard and eliminating the right-side control key completely -- a
significant frustration for heavy keyboard-shortcut users. On the positive
side, Toshiba gives you a choice of navigation devices. A tiny blue eraser-head
pointing stick has its own arched activation buttons just below the space
bar, which are curiously one above the other rather than side by side; a
smallish (7.6cm diagonal) touch pad features two side-by-side buttons as
well as dedicated scroll zones. During our use we found both methods workable,
though we occasionally wished the touch pad was larger. Below the keyboard,
you'll also find a fingerprint scanner that lets you log on to Windows and
to your favourite Web sites with the swipe of a finger.
Nearly all the Tecra A8's ports are lined
up along the back edge, which can get crowded but also contains the cord
mess to the back of your desk. The port selection is pretty typical for
a budget business system: three side-by-side USB 2.0, a four-pin FireWire,
VGA-out, modem and Ethernet ports. Headphone and microphone jacks are conveniently
located along the laptop's front edge, accompanied by a volume wheel and
Wi-Fi on/off switch. On the left side of the case sit slots for Type II
PC cards (though not the latest ExpressCards) and SD cards. A built-in DVD
burner sits along the right side of the case. Wireless options include 802.11a/b/g
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.
Toshiba sells a handful of fixed configurations
of the Tecra A8; our review unit, the Tecra A8-0HV041, costs AU$2,035. Its
components include a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 processor (the entry
level of the Core 2 Duo mobile line), 768MB of midrange 533MHz RAM, an average
80GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and economical Intel GMA 945 graphics. For the
sake of comparison, a fairly similarly configured Lenovo 3000 N100, with
a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo TT5600 processor, costs AU$1,799, while a nearly
identical Dell Latitude D820 costs AU$2,082.
Performance and battery life
On CNET Labs' benchmarks the Tecra A8 performed in the middle of a pack
that included systems with faster processors and more RAM. Its latest-generation
Intel processor helped it out on our CPU-intensive multitasking and iTunes
tests, where the Tecra A8 performed as well or better than a Lenovo ThinkPad
X60 Tablet with a previous-generation 1.83GHz Core Duo processor. On our
Photoshop test, the Tecra A8 trailed behind the ThinkPad X60 Tablet and
the Tecra M5, both of which had 2GB of RAM. Even on this fixed configuration
of the Tecra A8, you can upgrade the RAM to 2GB. The upgrade would be worth
the expense for workers who run such resource-intensive software as Photoshop;
however, the base RAM configuration on the Tecra A8- 0HV041 is sufficient
for typical e-mail, office productivity, and Web research tasks.
The Tecra A8 uses a common six-cell battery
and turned in an average score of one hour and 43 minutes on our demanding
DVD drain test. You can expect longer life during typical Windows use, but
we would have liked to see the Tecra A8 hold out for at least two hours.
Support
Toshiba backs the Tecra A8 with an industry-standard one-year warranty;
with options to extend the warranty to three years of on-site next business
day service for an additional fee. Support is accessible through a 24/7
toll-free phone line, an online knowledge base, and both a carry and mail-in
repair service.
Review provided by www.cnet.com.au
While Toshiba's Qosmio line is the company's
flagship desktop replacement multimedia powerhouse, the Satellite P100 series
is Toshiba's big and bold desktop replacement line that's built for gamers
and creative professionals. It features a 17-inch wide-screen display like
its Qosmio cousins, but the Satellite P100 PSPAGA puts more of its money
behind the core components to deliver top-notch performance and stellar
3D frame rates. Although it serves up excellent Harman-Kardon stereo speakers,
it doesn't feature a subwoofer, a TV tuner, or an HDMI output -- staples
of the Qosmio G30 line-up. We reviewed the most expensive, pre-configured
model in the Satellite P100 PSPAGA series: the AU$3,699 Satellite P100-PSPAGA-014001.
Prices in the 17-inch gaming laptop category can quickly escalate, and the
P100-PSPAGA seems downright inexpensive compared to the US$4,000 Alienware
Area-51 m5790 Special Edition, especially considering the Toshiba's far
better gaming scores. We'd be more apt to recommend it, however, if the
somewhat less-flashy Dell Inspiron 9400 didn't offer similar performance
for US$1,000 less.
Design
Measuring 393.7mm wide, 274.3mm deep, and 43.1mm high, the Satellite P100-PSPAGA
is big enough to work on comfortably for long stretches, but it's not the
kind of thing you'd want to lug around more than occasionally. The system
weighs 3.5kg (4.2kg with the hefty A/C adaptor), which is a little bit lighter
than some other desktop replacements, such as the Dell Inspiron 9400 and
HP Pavilion dv9000z, but the difference isn't enough to make us want to
commute with it.
The Satellite P100's case doesn't scream
"Gamer!" the same way the Alienware's alien head design does.
Instead, the silver-and-black interior and blue pearlised lid could easily
pull double-duty in an office environment. The blue LEDs that shine beneath
the black speaker grills are the only flashy design note, and even they
don't pulse and change colour like the speaker and fan vent lights on the
Dell XPS M1710.
Features
Toshiba outfits the Satellite P100 with a full-size keyboard and a 10-key
numeric keypad, a welcome feature increasingly common on desktop replacement
systems. We liked the touch pad's embedded control system, called Dual Mode,
that lets you control volume and launch applications from icons printed
right on the touch pad. You activate these alternate controls by tapping
the touch pad's upper right corner. There's also a fingerprint reader along
the right side of the wrist rest. Above the keyboard sit basic media controls
(play, stop, forward, back) and two programmable application launch buttons.
On the front edge, a small volume wheel controls two Harman Kardon speakers
that produce nice sound -- although not as hefty at the Dell Inspiron 9400,
which has a built-in subwoofer.
The screen's 1,680x1,050 native resolution
is the same as you'd find on many wide-screen 21-inch LCD monitors, and
provides for plenty of screen real estate. For high-end gaming, digital
media viewing and working with high-res photos, this works great, although
the less expensive Dell 9400 went all the way up to 1,920x1,200, which is
almost too high, making text and icons hard to see.
The Satellite P100 leaves out very little
when it comes to ports and connections. It has headphone, microphone, and
S/PDIF audio jacks; VGA, S-Video, and DVI video outputs for hooking up an
external monitor; as well as a single four-pin FireWire and four USB 2.0
ports. The system has both a Type II PC Card slot and an Express Card slot,
plus a media card reader. Networking options include Gigabit Ethernet, modem,
Bluetooth, and Intel PRO/Wireless A/B/G. That's a comprehensive selection
of connections and will satisfy nearly any user. The only thing lacking
seems to be an HDMI connection -- still rare in laptops, but found in Toshiba's
Qosmio line.
The Satellite P100-PSPAGA is a fixed-configuration
system, featuring Windows Vista Home Premium, a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
T7400 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 200GB 4200rpm hard drive, a DVD burner, and
a 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7900GTX graphics card (which is good, but not
as good as the GeForce Go 7950) That's an impressive set of components.
Performance and battery life
Compared to recent desktop replacement laptops, the Satellite P100-PSPAGA
offered decent performance, although it fell behind the Dell Inspiron 9400
(although the Dell features a Core 2 Duo T7400) and Alienware Area-51 m5790
Special Edition (with a faster Core 2 Duo T7600 CPU) in CNET Labs' multitasking
and iTunes encoding tests. But the differences were not great, and at this
upper end of the performance curve, all these machines are blazingly fast.
We couldn't detect any real-world performance difference between the Dell,
Alienware, and Toshiba laptops in anecdotal use.
When it comes to gaming, the differences
are somewhat more pronounced. This is where the Dell XPS M1710's faster
CPU (Core 2 Duo T7600) and GPU (Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX) come in handy,
churning out 85 frames per second in F.E.A.R. at 1280x1024, topping the
Satellite P100's 58 frames per second. Bear in mind, however, the M1710
is much more expensive. While it's not the fastest gaming laptop we've seen,
the Toshiba offered very playable frame rates and easily beat the Alienware
Area-51 m5790 Special Edition.
The system ran for only 90 minutes on our
DVD battery drain test, using the included nine-cell battery. That's the
shortest battery life we've seen from a desktop replacement in the Windows
Vista era. Even though large systems like this are not designed for long
battery life, we were disappointed. The 17-inch Dell's XPS M1710 and 9400
ran for two hours, six minutes, and two hours, 28 minutes, respectively.
Support
Toshiba backs the Satellite P100 with a typical one-year warranty with return
to depot service. Users are able to extending coverage to a three years
on-site service. The company's toll-free tech support line is available
24/7, and Toshiba's Web site offers lots of tech support sections, but we
found it hard to find specific answers to our questions between the dozens
of links in the Customer Care and Learning Center sections, and a seemingly
nonfunctional search engine.
Editor's note:
This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such,
please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure
and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on
the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally
published. References made to some other products in this review may not
be available or applicable in Australia. Please check directly with your
local distributor for details.
Review provided by www.cnet.com.au |
