edwilson13185
06-04-2006, 10:53 PM
I'm kind of new around here. Er, I've been a member for almost a year now, but have just recently started posting. :) I thought I'd share my thoughts on my latest Toshiba that I picked up this evening. This is my third Toshiba, and so far, it's my favorite.
The specs:
Intel Core Solo T1300 processor @ 1.66GHz
1024MB DDR2 SDRAM
100GB SATA hard drive @ 5400RPM (not sure of the brand, but it sounds like a Toshiba)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (:bow::D)
harmon/kardon speakers
17" TrueBrite WXGA screen
Windows XP Media Center Edition
USB 2.0, FireWire, media card reader, S-video out
DVD SuperMulti drive
Fingerprint reader
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG-for a, b, and g 802.11 networks
The deal:
Toshiba's website listed the system for $1,399. I'd found it online for anything from $1,149 to $1,400 at various sites. I found it on Circuit City.com for $1,099 ($1,399-$150 instant discount-$150 mail-in rebate). I thought it was a pretty good deal, so I went and picked one up.
Assembly/Build Quality
This is my third Toshiba. I feel that out-of-the-box build quality is on par with the other two (a Satellite 1905 and a Satellite A55). Build quality easily equals that of the newer Dell and Siemens/Fujitsu notebooks I've seen, and in my opinion, beats that of HP/Compaq and Gateway. The screen hinges operate smoothly, and the chassis seems to be very solid. Lifting the machine by one corner produces no creaks, and everything seems well-anchored. Overall, the componentry is similar in feel to that of my A55. The 1905 seemed to have a heavier overall build, and maintained its solidity over time. The A55's hinges began to sqeak and give slightly after about a year, and the chassis seemed to loosen up a bit. Since the P105 is made similarly, I am expecting it to loosen up like the A55 did. Both the 1905 (4 years old) and the A55 (almost 2 years old) have been stellar as far as reliability is concerned, however (zero hardware problems with either), and I'm expecting the same of the P105. The only real issue I take with the P105's build quality is some minor keyboard flex. It's nothing terrible, but the 1905 and A55 were solid as rocks in this category.
Keyboard Use/Feel
The keyboard is good overall, aside from the aforementioned flex. The keyboard rivals a desktop keyboard in terms of available keys. The extra width of the chassis required to accomodate the 17" screen made it possible for Toshiba to add a full-featured numberic keypad to the keyboard. I find this extremely useful, as I prefer to use the dedicated keypad in lieu of the top row of numbers on the keyboard. There are a few things I take issue with, however. The location bumps on the F, J, and numberic keypad 5 keys aren't as big as the ones on my A55. It's a very minor issue, but I find myself having to look down at the keyboard to correctly place my hands for touch typing. I frequently use my computer in the dark, so this is slightly inconvenient. Also, to make room for the numeric keypad, the home/pgdown/pgup/end keys were moved to the top row of the keyboard, and the home/pgup and end/pgdown keys were combined. I use all four of these keys, and I prefer the old arrangement (on the right side of the keyboard). The right shift button is now the size of a standard letter key, as opposed to my A55's three-key-wide right shift button. I find myself hitting the up arrow or the backslash key when I had intended to hit shift. Still, these sacrifices are worth it for the numeric keypad, in my opinion.
The Screen:
This is the primary reason I bought this system. I spend dozens of hours per week in front of my computer. I take it to classes with me and take notes with it, I do a lot of homework on it, and I use it for work, as well. I've wanted a 17" notebook for a couple of years now, but they were cost-prohibitive at the time I purchased the A55. I've also found the A55's standard screen to have a very poor viewing angle. There is *no* such trouble with the P105's screen. This beauty is in the WXGA format, a full 17" diagonally, and features the "TrueBrite" technology. It can easily be viewed from any angle, and I find the glossy coating to be easier on the eyes. Color saturation is good, but not great. It's not something most people would notice, and I am still very satisfied with it. The weak point here would have to be the graphics engine: an Intel Graphics Media 950 engine, sharing up to 128MB of system memory for use as a frame buffer. It certainly can't hold a candle to the dedicated nVidia engines used by the P105's more expensive brethren, but it is more than up to the tasks I ask of it. For heavy gaming or other GPU-intensive tasks, though, I would highly recommend a Toshiba model with a dedicated GPU.
Audio:
The P105-S6004 is equipped with a Conexant HD Audio chip, exterior headphone/mic/line in jacks, and two harmon/kardon stereo speakers. The P105 soundly (no pun intended) beats the 1905 and A55 in this area. In fact, I would be willing to go so far as to say these are the best-sounding notebook speakers I've ever heard. The sound is very full and rich, and there is actually relatively good bass. It's certainly going to make me happy when I'm spinning up some CDs while doing homework. One complaint I have here is that the speakers are located at the bottom edge of the chassis, versus the top edge on the A55. It's difficult to type comfortably without my wrists covering the speaker grates and muffling those sweet harmon/kardons. A second complaint is that the audio in/out jacks are on the front of the laptop, whereas the A55's were on the right side. My personal preference is to have them on the side, as it's easier to bump the connections when they're on front. Despite these two minor complaints, though, Toshiba has done an excellent job with this audio system.
Connectivity/Pointing/Multimedia:
There are four USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE 1394 port, an S-video out port, an Ethernet jack, a 56K V.92 modem jack, and an RGB video port. A decent-sized touchpad with two buttons resides at the bottom of the keyboard. Its location is good--easy enough to get to, but not in the way while typing. A fingerprint reader is located just under the keyboard's numeric keypad on the right side. It can provide scrolling functions. I haven't used the fingerprint reader very much yet, but it seems like a very handy feature for logging into Windows and other things securely. The only downside is that, from what I understand, the fingerprint reader software only works with Internet Explorer for web site passwords. So if you use any other browser, you may be out of luck. There are also seven buttons located along the top edge of the chassis, above the keyboard. One is the power buttom, two are programmable web access/media player buttons, and the other four are media player control buttons. My understanding is that these can be used to control media functions while the laptop is turned off, but I have not yet tried this feature.
The laptop also features an internal Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG wireless card. It's capable of operating on 802.11 a, b, and g networks. This is an advantage over the A55's b/g-only card. 802.11a networks seem to have faded out, but it's nice to know that this system can work with them if I ever need it to.
Indicator lights:
The system indicator lights are split up: five are located along the bottom edge of the chassis, and three are located at the top of the chassis to the right of the power/media control buttons. Along the bottom row are the AC, power, battery status, hard drive activity, and media card activity indicator lights. All five of these are blue LEDs, as opposed to the A55's green LEDs. The battery's LED glows blue when it is fully charged, and it glows orange when the battery is charging. Along the top of the chassis are the number/scroll/caps lock indicator LEDs, also blue.
Storage:
A 100 gigabyte, SATA hard drive spinning at 5,400RPM does internal storage duty for the P105. The drive is very quiet, and seems to run very cool. The upgraded 7,200 RPM drive in my A55 turned the palm rest above it into a hot plate. I haven't popped the cover to check out the brand of the P105's hard drive, but from the sound, I'd say it's a Toshiba. A DVD SuperMulti drive occupies the optical drive bay on the right side of the P105. It is capable of writing to and reading from DVD/CD -/+ R/RW/RAM/ROM media. I haven't tried this feature yet, but the DVD SuperMulti drive in my A55 always pleased. The P105 also has a most welcome feature over the A55: a media card reader. Called a "5-in-1 bridge adapter" by Toshiba, this small slot is located on the front of the unit, under the primary indicator lights. It was able to read from and write to my xD Picture Cards flawlessly.
Software:
The P105 comes with a fairly standard bundle of software. Windows XP Media Center 2005 Edition is the preloaded operating system. It also comes with a trial edition of Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft's excellent OneNote 2003 software (full version), Quicken 2006, Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2003, Toshiba Express Media Player, InterVideo WinDVD, McAfee Security Suite Trial, Sonic RecordNow!, Toshiba's innovative ConfigFree automatic connectivity software, and Microsoft Works 8.1. Nothing out of the ordinary here, save for the OneNote 2003 software. Overall, a reasonable software bundle given the system's price. I am somewhat puzzled, however, by Toshiba's choice of the Media Center operating system. The P105 doesn't seem to have any media functions that the XP Home or Pro operating systems wouldn't be adequate for. It's certainly not a flaw; just somewhat puzzling. Toshiba unfortunately includes a lot of bloatware with the system, such as AOL, WildTangent Game Console, ArcSoft's suite, and some various, but pretty much useless Toshiba utilities. The one exception is the CD/DVD drive acoustic silencer, which can quiet the somewhat noisy DVD drive when listening to music or watching a movie. Toshiba makes up for the bloatware sins by including some relaxing jazz and some punchy rock music in the media folder.
Overall Operation:
The system boots quickly, and its performance is very snappy. I have not benchmarked it, so I have no raw performance data, but "seat-of-the-pants" feel puts it on par with its competition. The system is relatively quiet, with the only annoyance here being the system's cooling fan. It is prone to kicking in often under heavy CPU loads, and it is quite noticable. The A55's cooling fan was hardly noticable. However, the P105 seems to be able to run its cooling fan at different speeds, and most of the time it isn't noticable. I haven't used the system long enough to determine if there's any regularity to the system operating its fan at full-throttle for an instant and then shutting it off.
Portability/Battery Life:
The unit weighs about 7 pounds, so it's no lightweight, but certainly not painfully heavy. It fits easily into my padded bookbag, and isn't much thicker than my old A55. I don't even notice the extra weight. I managed slightly under 3 hours of battery life on the initial charge, and the battery seems to charge quickly.
Overall, the P105's snappy performance, excellent feature set (including some unexpected, but nontheless welcome features), good battery life, standard software bundle, superb sound system, good connectivity options, and reasonable price combine to make it a solid value. Add in Toshiba's reputation for good reliability, and it's a no-brainer. I'd recommend this system without reservation to students, businesspeople, and travelers who need a budget system but don't want to sacrifice features or style.
The specs:
Intel Core Solo T1300 processor @ 1.66GHz
1024MB DDR2 SDRAM
100GB SATA hard drive @ 5400RPM (not sure of the brand, but it sounds like a Toshiba)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (:bow::D)
harmon/kardon speakers
17" TrueBrite WXGA screen
Windows XP Media Center Edition
USB 2.0, FireWire, media card reader, S-video out
DVD SuperMulti drive
Fingerprint reader
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG-for a, b, and g 802.11 networks
The deal:
Toshiba's website listed the system for $1,399. I'd found it online for anything from $1,149 to $1,400 at various sites. I found it on Circuit City.com for $1,099 ($1,399-$150 instant discount-$150 mail-in rebate). I thought it was a pretty good deal, so I went and picked one up.
Assembly/Build Quality
This is my third Toshiba. I feel that out-of-the-box build quality is on par with the other two (a Satellite 1905 and a Satellite A55). Build quality easily equals that of the newer Dell and Siemens/Fujitsu notebooks I've seen, and in my opinion, beats that of HP/Compaq and Gateway. The screen hinges operate smoothly, and the chassis seems to be very solid. Lifting the machine by one corner produces no creaks, and everything seems well-anchored. Overall, the componentry is similar in feel to that of my A55. The 1905 seemed to have a heavier overall build, and maintained its solidity over time. The A55's hinges began to sqeak and give slightly after about a year, and the chassis seemed to loosen up a bit. Since the P105 is made similarly, I am expecting it to loosen up like the A55 did. Both the 1905 (4 years old) and the A55 (almost 2 years old) have been stellar as far as reliability is concerned, however (zero hardware problems with either), and I'm expecting the same of the P105. The only real issue I take with the P105's build quality is some minor keyboard flex. It's nothing terrible, but the 1905 and A55 were solid as rocks in this category.
Keyboard Use/Feel
The keyboard is good overall, aside from the aforementioned flex. The keyboard rivals a desktop keyboard in terms of available keys. The extra width of the chassis required to accomodate the 17" screen made it possible for Toshiba to add a full-featured numberic keypad to the keyboard. I find this extremely useful, as I prefer to use the dedicated keypad in lieu of the top row of numbers on the keyboard. There are a few things I take issue with, however. The location bumps on the F, J, and numberic keypad 5 keys aren't as big as the ones on my A55. It's a very minor issue, but I find myself having to look down at the keyboard to correctly place my hands for touch typing. I frequently use my computer in the dark, so this is slightly inconvenient. Also, to make room for the numeric keypad, the home/pgdown/pgup/end keys were moved to the top row of the keyboard, and the home/pgup and end/pgdown keys were combined. I use all four of these keys, and I prefer the old arrangement (on the right side of the keyboard). The right shift button is now the size of a standard letter key, as opposed to my A55's three-key-wide right shift button. I find myself hitting the up arrow or the backslash key when I had intended to hit shift. Still, these sacrifices are worth it for the numeric keypad, in my opinion.
The Screen:
This is the primary reason I bought this system. I spend dozens of hours per week in front of my computer. I take it to classes with me and take notes with it, I do a lot of homework on it, and I use it for work, as well. I've wanted a 17" notebook for a couple of years now, but they were cost-prohibitive at the time I purchased the A55. I've also found the A55's standard screen to have a very poor viewing angle. There is *no* such trouble with the P105's screen. This beauty is in the WXGA format, a full 17" diagonally, and features the "TrueBrite" technology. It can easily be viewed from any angle, and I find the glossy coating to be easier on the eyes. Color saturation is good, but not great. It's not something most people would notice, and I am still very satisfied with it. The weak point here would have to be the graphics engine: an Intel Graphics Media 950 engine, sharing up to 128MB of system memory for use as a frame buffer. It certainly can't hold a candle to the dedicated nVidia engines used by the P105's more expensive brethren, but it is more than up to the tasks I ask of it. For heavy gaming or other GPU-intensive tasks, though, I would highly recommend a Toshiba model with a dedicated GPU.
Audio:
The P105-S6004 is equipped with a Conexant HD Audio chip, exterior headphone/mic/line in jacks, and two harmon/kardon stereo speakers. The P105 soundly (no pun intended) beats the 1905 and A55 in this area. In fact, I would be willing to go so far as to say these are the best-sounding notebook speakers I've ever heard. The sound is very full and rich, and there is actually relatively good bass. It's certainly going to make me happy when I'm spinning up some CDs while doing homework. One complaint I have here is that the speakers are located at the bottom edge of the chassis, versus the top edge on the A55. It's difficult to type comfortably without my wrists covering the speaker grates and muffling those sweet harmon/kardons. A second complaint is that the audio in/out jacks are on the front of the laptop, whereas the A55's were on the right side. My personal preference is to have them on the side, as it's easier to bump the connections when they're on front. Despite these two minor complaints, though, Toshiba has done an excellent job with this audio system.
Connectivity/Pointing/Multimedia:
There are four USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE 1394 port, an S-video out port, an Ethernet jack, a 56K V.92 modem jack, and an RGB video port. A decent-sized touchpad with two buttons resides at the bottom of the keyboard. Its location is good--easy enough to get to, but not in the way while typing. A fingerprint reader is located just under the keyboard's numeric keypad on the right side. It can provide scrolling functions. I haven't used the fingerprint reader very much yet, but it seems like a very handy feature for logging into Windows and other things securely. The only downside is that, from what I understand, the fingerprint reader software only works with Internet Explorer for web site passwords. So if you use any other browser, you may be out of luck. There are also seven buttons located along the top edge of the chassis, above the keyboard. One is the power buttom, two are programmable web access/media player buttons, and the other four are media player control buttons. My understanding is that these can be used to control media functions while the laptop is turned off, but I have not yet tried this feature.
The laptop also features an internal Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG wireless card. It's capable of operating on 802.11 a, b, and g networks. This is an advantage over the A55's b/g-only card. 802.11a networks seem to have faded out, but it's nice to know that this system can work with them if I ever need it to.
Indicator lights:
The system indicator lights are split up: five are located along the bottom edge of the chassis, and three are located at the top of the chassis to the right of the power/media control buttons. Along the bottom row are the AC, power, battery status, hard drive activity, and media card activity indicator lights. All five of these are blue LEDs, as opposed to the A55's green LEDs. The battery's LED glows blue when it is fully charged, and it glows orange when the battery is charging. Along the top of the chassis are the number/scroll/caps lock indicator LEDs, also blue.
Storage:
A 100 gigabyte, SATA hard drive spinning at 5,400RPM does internal storage duty for the P105. The drive is very quiet, and seems to run very cool. The upgraded 7,200 RPM drive in my A55 turned the palm rest above it into a hot plate. I haven't popped the cover to check out the brand of the P105's hard drive, but from the sound, I'd say it's a Toshiba. A DVD SuperMulti drive occupies the optical drive bay on the right side of the P105. It is capable of writing to and reading from DVD/CD -/+ R/RW/RAM/ROM media. I haven't tried this feature yet, but the DVD SuperMulti drive in my A55 always pleased. The P105 also has a most welcome feature over the A55: a media card reader. Called a "5-in-1 bridge adapter" by Toshiba, this small slot is located on the front of the unit, under the primary indicator lights. It was able to read from and write to my xD Picture Cards flawlessly.
Software:
The P105 comes with a fairly standard bundle of software. Windows XP Media Center 2005 Edition is the preloaded operating system. It also comes with a trial edition of Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft's excellent OneNote 2003 software (full version), Quicken 2006, Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2003, Toshiba Express Media Player, InterVideo WinDVD, McAfee Security Suite Trial, Sonic RecordNow!, Toshiba's innovative ConfigFree automatic connectivity software, and Microsoft Works 8.1. Nothing out of the ordinary here, save for the OneNote 2003 software. Overall, a reasonable software bundle given the system's price. I am somewhat puzzled, however, by Toshiba's choice of the Media Center operating system. The P105 doesn't seem to have any media functions that the XP Home or Pro operating systems wouldn't be adequate for. It's certainly not a flaw; just somewhat puzzling. Toshiba unfortunately includes a lot of bloatware with the system, such as AOL, WildTangent Game Console, ArcSoft's suite, and some various, but pretty much useless Toshiba utilities. The one exception is the CD/DVD drive acoustic silencer, which can quiet the somewhat noisy DVD drive when listening to music or watching a movie. Toshiba makes up for the bloatware sins by including some relaxing jazz and some punchy rock music in the media folder.
Overall Operation:
The system boots quickly, and its performance is very snappy. I have not benchmarked it, so I have no raw performance data, but "seat-of-the-pants" feel puts it on par with its competition. The system is relatively quiet, with the only annoyance here being the system's cooling fan. It is prone to kicking in often under heavy CPU loads, and it is quite noticable. The A55's cooling fan was hardly noticable. However, the P105 seems to be able to run its cooling fan at different speeds, and most of the time it isn't noticable. I haven't used the system long enough to determine if there's any regularity to the system operating its fan at full-throttle for an instant and then shutting it off.
Portability/Battery Life:
The unit weighs about 7 pounds, so it's no lightweight, but certainly not painfully heavy. It fits easily into my padded bookbag, and isn't much thicker than my old A55. I don't even notice the extra weight. I managed slightly under 3 hours of battery life on the initial charge, and the battery seems to charge quickly.
Overall, the P105's snappy performance, excellent feature set (including some unexpected, but nontheless welcome features), good battery life, standard software bundle, superb sound system, good connectivity options, and reasonable price combine to make it a solid value. Add in Toshiba's reputation for good reliability, and it's a no-brainer. I'd recommend this system without reservation to students, businesspeople, and travelers who need a budget system but don't want to sacrifice features or style.