Review: M3 Arrived! (Custom Order)

[chapter]

1.86 P4m
1025 GB DDR2
60 GB 5400
6620 nVidia w/64MB
SXGA+ 1400x1050
2200 BG
Bluetooth
DVD/CD-RW
Windows XP Pro
3 Year System Guard

Purchased at Toshiba Direct. $2,300

I am in the middle of writing a 6 page review. Here are some highlights:

Battery life with heavy usage, WiFi, video etc., was about 2 hours 45 minutes.

Screen is bright, and had no dead pixels.

Notebook is FAST. Very fast.



Relatively light, and rather thin.

No CD's, you must burn your own backup (8CDs), and there is a backup partition.

Metal chassis is great, no creak/flex.

Horrible, left mouse button, requires significant force, and not very comfortable.

Mediocre touchpad. Out - of the box, useless, need to adjust sensitivity, still not very good!

Horrible speakers, like really bad. Awful! A tiny Dell Latitude X300 has better sound.

Bluetooth is not fully installed out of the box, after install (each service requires an install and Plug-N-Play prompts for each) and they seem like all Toshiba proprietary drivers, you must go into a lot of menus to get things to work. ie. Even after pairing, the File Transfer service is not enabled. Good luck finding the menu!

Office trial installed. I uninstalled it. Then installed my copy of Office 2003. Unfortunately because of the uninstall, I can not use Office Update service, I must manually download and run each service pack for each product!

Yes, there is an ExpressCard slot and a PCMICA slot.

[redox]

Chapter,

Have you attempted to open the case up and check out the innards?
I was wondering if you could you tell me if the wifi card on the M3 is removable/upgradeable? I am assuming the harddrive is upgradeable. Finally, is the lcd panel the non-glare type or the glossy glare type?

TIA

[smilepak]

Nice. You will enjoy that piece of machine. For some reason for me, I can't seems to grasp the fact it is 14.1 screen vs 15 for S2. I know it is a very minimal differences, but my brian said nah.

[chapter]

Well, I see someone beat me to the punch, with a very good review of the M3 on www.notebookreview.com. I guess I will not finish mine.

A few more notes:
14.1" definitly. I wanted more of a 13". The Sony S-380 was the closest competitor, along with the Dell D410. In the end it was clear that only Toshiba is producing a full "Sonoma" notebook. The others are just old models with a new chipset. For example they do not inclde an ExpressCard.

Non-Glare screen.

The "Function" key icons are a very light grey. Very difficult to see, compared to the blue icons on a IBM or Dell.

Yes, the insert/delete button are TOTALLY in the wrong place.

Personally, having significant experice with Dell's Bluetooth, Logitech's Bluetooth, Belkin and Targus bluetooth software, I find the Toshiba's bluetooth implementation and software horrible. Lots of hidden menus and non-standard screens. Does anyone know if the Bluetooth chipset is compliant with Windows or Widcom's software?

Yes, when on electric power, with the battery removed, sitting writing these comments on the couch, the fan is on and the air blowing out is very warm.

[Fidget]

sounds like it should be a fast little machine, should be good. enjoy your new toy.

[LaptopBoy]

Thanks for the review. A couple of observations:
1) your comments about the fan running almost continuously when on AC is disturbing. Reason my 3 year old Sat 3005-S307 1.1Ghz P3-M has had the same problems. Result was overheat and a new motherboard, FDD, HDD, and although unlrelated a new screen inverter. Toshiba issued a dumbed down BIOS which tweaked the CPU speed. Even with that I dumb the speed down to under 500Mhz to avoid the fan ramping up.

Since the new BIOS machine runs fine (except for still having to dial the speed down) but I have always felt like I could have purchased a machine with a slower processor.

2) Is the memory swappable? That is can one replace it with 533Mhz memory to match the CPU speed.

Would be interested in hearing from you new M3 owners 3 and 6 months down the line regarding whether you are still happy with it. Thanks. Nice looking machine. Any reason why you chose the M3 over a T42? T42 doesnt have firewire of course but any other reasons?

[JJ15k]

Hello,
I m wondering too about the fan noise, I understand such a machine has to pu out some heat, however I just experienced the extreme quietness of a dell D610 and I d sure like my new machine to be as silent

[voidar]

The more reviews the merrier.

[g00nter]

Please finish the review. It's always nice to see more than one opinion!!

Enjoy!!

[Despotes]

The M3 has a rebate going on at their site. $218.40, I'm not sure if it depends on configuration.
They're offering the 60 Gig 7200 rpm drive now. I think they weren't last month.
EDIT: Maybe it was that they weren't offering 533 Mhz memory and now they are. ??
It's a great looking laptop. Is the screen of good quality. Light leakage? sparkles? Sharp text? How are the whites?