psyshack
04-29-2006, 08:09 PM
Hello all.
This is my first post on this fine looking board. Looks like theres a good thing going here!
I purchased my Toshiba M55-S3314 three weeks ago today. Thought I would share a bit about it. It came with everything I wanted or needed. Was on sale at Best Buy for $850, I got it for $700. I purchased another machine at the same time for my daughter. It was dead in the store so I set to dealing. :)
P-M 1.73 Ghz, 512 meg ram, centrino base machine. 14" wide trubrite screen. Intel built in vid. Wireless and cat5 network. 80 gig 5400 rpm harddrive. combo dvd/dual layer/ cd burner/player, sd card reader, one type I/II slot, monitor port out, s-vidio out, I-link, mic. in, headphone out, 4ea. usb ports. Im sure Ive missed others. :)
So far it has ran very well. Its snappy and quick to say the least. The lcd is very good and I love the keyboard. The keyboard reminds me of a IBM board of days gone buy. I find it very refreshing in its action and tactal feel. The touch pad is ok. Im forceing myself to use the pad. I wont be whiping out a mouse when Im mobile so Im useing it.
Its on the light side at 5.3 lbs or so with battery. It is on the flimsy side. This is a given imo with the machine boardering on a cheap light weight unit. It has a over all good feel to it and a handsom look. Mine has a dark blue top and looks good imo. Set's it apart and dosent give it that pimp my lappy look.
I havent done any benchs with the machine yet. I plan on doing this once I get it config'd the way I want. I do have it running folding@home 24/7 on big packets when on A/C power. Ive done some photoshop work, surfing the net and many other things without issue at 100% cpu load for hours on end. Ive had no lock ups, frozen programs or reboots at all. Its been rock stable.
We took the unit on vaction with us and it did very well. Wife watched a few dvd's and videos while we where on the road. My new Civic has a aux audio in jack. So I got a patch cord. Plug it in the headphone out jack on the lappy to the aux in on the Civic and the audio plays thru the car stereo unit. ( no surround sound ) Ive had it on a APC inverter with no problems also. The audio is lappy weak. But better than most. It has two small speakers just under the lcd. They try real hard, so audio is useable. The SRS helps alot in giveing a bit of seperation and space in its sound. There is far worse lappy audio out there.
The cd/dvd combo drive seems to work well. Ive used it to install software, burn data to cd, play dvd and get data off dvd disk. I havent burnt a dvd with it yet. It seems to be a bit slower so far than say one of my desk top computers. It has some noise. The machine comes with software for this. But no way Im going to slow something down for 1 or 2 db.
So far the battery is lasting 2.5 to 3 hours with the wireless nic running.
There are some concerns and issues tho. No such thing as perfect. :)
The unit came bloated like a pig. Ive spent 3 weeks yanking crap off this machine. The oem install really sucks. Out of the box it had 65 processes running. Come on Toshiba,,, thats retarded. Plain freggin stupid you idiots. Im still not done with the config! Put 512 meg of ram in a machine and use 3/4 of it at boot! So Im dealing with that mess. ( Im better now,,, )
This machine seems to run on the warm side. I wont say hot. But very warm. There is something to the right of the touch pad that likes to get warm and the harddrive likes to stay warmer than I would like. This heat is generated wether its folding at 100% cpu load or puttering around at low cpu loads and on the battery.
So,,, the only complaints I have are: The OEM software install blows and there are some heat issues,,, IMO.
I didnt buy a extended warrenty for the machine. Just couldnt justify it. It didnt cost much and I will surely void any and all warrenty as soon as I crack it open and set to overclocking it. :) If all works out. :thumbup:
I did add another 512 meg of ram yesterday to bring it up to the 1 gig mark. It didnt speed it up one bit. But did give it some breathing room. Found some PNY PC-2700 at Compusa for $59.99 with a $20.00 mail in rebate. Its worked well and appears to spec at ddr-400 speeds. So that was all good and a useful tool in any overclocking work.
Ive also put the machine on a bakers cooling rack bought at Wal-Mart for $5.00 for 2ea. This has droped the harddrive temp by 5 degrees C as reported by Speed fan. So this is all good.
Heres a few pics of the lappy and its new home.
psy
http://www.psyshack.com/tos1.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos2.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos3.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos4.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos5.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos6.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tosdesk.jpg
This is my first post on this fine looking board. Looks like theres a good thing going here!
I purchased my Toshiba M55-S3314 three weeks ago today. Thought I would share a bit about it. It came with everything I wanted or needed. Was on sale at Best Buy for $850, I got it for $700. I purchased another machine at the same time for my daughter. It was dead in the store so I set to dealing. :)
P-M 1.73 Ghz, 512 meg ram, centrino base machine. 14" wide trubrite screen. Intel built in vid. Wireless and cat5 network. 80 gig 5400 rpm harddrive. combo dvd/dual layer/ cd burner/player, sd card reader, one type I/II slot, monitor port out, s-vidio out, I-link, mic. in, headphone out, 4ea. usb ports. Im sure Ive missed others. :)
So far it has ran very well. Its snappy and quick to say the least. The lcd is very good and I love the keyboard. The keyboard reminds me of a IBM board of days gone buy. I find it very refreshing in its action and tactal feel. The touch pad is ok. Im forceing myself to use the pad. I wont be whiping out a mouse when Im mobile so Im useing it.
Its on the light side at 5.3 lbs or so with battery. It is on the flimsy side. This is a given imo with the machine boardering on a cheap light weight unit. It has a over all good feel to it and a handsom look. Mine has a dark blue top and looks good imo. Set's it apart and dosent give it that pimp my lappy look.
I havent done any benchs with the machine yet. I plan on doing this once I get it config'd the way I want. I do have it running folding@home 24/7 on big packets when on A/C power. Ive done some photoshop work, surfing the net and many other things without issue at 100% cpu load for hours on end. Ive had no lock ups, frozen programs or reboots at all. Its been rock stable.
We took the unit on vaction with us and it did very well. Wife watched a few dvd's and videos while we where on the road. My new Civic has a aux audio in jack. So I got a patch cord. Plug it in the headphone out jack on the lappy to the aux in on the Civic and the audio plays thru the car stereo unit. ( no surround sound ) Ive had it on a APC inverter with no problems also. The audio is lappy weak. But better than most. It has two small speakers just under the lcd. They try real hard, so audio is useable. The SRS helps alot in giveing a bit of seperation and space in its sound. There is far worse lappy audio out there.
The cd/dvd combo drive seems to work well. Ive used it to install software, burn data to cd, play dvd and get data off dvd disk. I havent burnt a dvd with it yet. It seems to be a bit slower so far than say one of my desk top computers. It has some noise. The machine comes with software for this. But no way Im going to slow something down for 1 or 2 db.
So far the battery is lasting 2.5 to 3 hours with the wireless nic running.
There are some concerns and issues tho. No such thing as perfect. :)
The unit came bloated like a pig. Ive spent 3 weeks yanking crap off this machine. The oem install really sucks. Out of the box it had 65 processes running. Come on Toshiba,,, thats retarded. Plain freggin stupid you idiots. Im still not done with the config! Put 512 meg of ram in a machine and use 3/4 of it at boot! So Im dealing with that mess. ( Im better now,,, )
This machine seems to run on the warm side. I wont say hot. But very warm. There is something to the right of the touch pad that likes to get warm and the harddrive likes to stay warmer than I would like. This heat is generated wether its folding at 100% cpu load or puttering around at low cpu loads and on the battery.
So,,, the only complaints I have are: The OEM software install blows and there are some heat issues,,, IMO.
I didnt buy a extended warrenty for the machine. Just couldnt justify it. It didnt cost much and I will surely void any and all warrenty as soon as I crack it open and set to overclocking it. :) If all works out. :thumbup:
I did add another 512 meg of ram yesterday to bring it up to the 1 gig mark. It didnt speed it up one bit. But did give it some breathing room. Found some PNY PC-2700 at Compusa for $59.99 with a $20.00 mail in rebate. Its worked well and appears to spec at ddr-400 speeds. So that was all good and a useful tool in any overclocking work.
Ive also put the machine on a bakers cooling rack bought at Wal-Mart for $5.00 for 2ea. This has droped the harddrive temp by 5 degrees C as reported by Speed fan. So this is all good.
Heres a few pics of the lappy and its new home.
psy
http://www.psyshack.com/tos1.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos2.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos3.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos4.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos5.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tos6.jpg
http://www.psyshack.com/tosdesk.jpg