Review: Toshiba Tecra S2

[mcyi]

Okay, this is the first ever Toshiba Tecra S2 review on Notebook Forums! I'm sorry for how long I took to post this. But there was some problems in which I was seperated from my computer. But here is the review.

Ordering : Building : Shipping

Okay Toshiba has made ordering very easy, but let me tell you now. If there is a problem with your order, your going to have to call them because they will not send you any e-mail, call, or mail! Anyways Build Time is very long...8-10 business days, in my case it took 11 days. So don't take the dates set up on the site seriously. Always give room for error. Now shipping is the worst!!!!! :eek:
I swear, Toshiba is the worst shipper on the planet! Tracking Numbers will not come to you until 1-2 days after they ship the product! But whatever. If anything...they must improve their e-mail or contact service.

This part of the order gets a 6.5/10

Customer Service

During the ordering : build : ship time I had called Toshiba at least 8 times and please believe I was very satisfied. They do not have outsourced workers or I don't think so. But you can hear them clearly and you can defenitely understand them! Sometimes the information is not correct and sometimes you are left on hold for 2-7 minutes. But Toshiba has one of the best customer services on the planet!

This part of the order gets a 9.8/10

Laptop

Now the biggest part of the review, the laptop. Okay lets start off by saying the case is amazingly gorgeous! Silver and black. The power button has a green backlighting so it matches the nvidia graphics sticker!!! LOL! The only thing is its kind of on the heavy side. Especially for a Pentium M sucker! I would say its close to 7 pounds! The laptop is also 1.2 inches thick! It has 3 usb ports! But thats about it! The performance is great. I defenitely reccomend at least a 1.86 processor! Battery life is crazy short! 3 hours at the most! Thats crazy!

Laptop: Daily Stuff

Works, Internet, Chatting, E-mail, Music, Video.....this laptop handles all this stuff like a piece of cake. The Pentium M processor defenitely gives the performance!

Laptop: Gaming

Gaming is great! The Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 is amazing! A great graphics card and puts out amazingly. It doesn't show in the benchmarks but in real time gaming it gives a great smooth reaction! Almost looks real!

Benchmarks:

Aquamark: 36,584
3DMark05: 1548
3DMark03: 5134
3DMark01: 13,984

Yeah not as good as an x700 but who cares? Never underestimate this card. Especially seeing its sales in the desktop area! Another thing...the touchpad is crazy gay! You have to put sensitivity up to 100% and you might want to get a usb mouse if you plan on doing point and click games! Plus the touchpad does freeze up once in a while! But that happens once in a while.

Laptop: Overall

Great Performance, Low Battery Life for Pentium M, Strong GPU, Great Looks, Horrible Touchpad!

Overall: 8.9

[smilepak]

Yeah not as good as an x700 but who cares?

Really?! Hmm I thought it was comparable, if not better. I wonder if Toshiba underclock the nVidia to conserve battery.

Nice review. Pictures? :)

[mcyi]

Well Pictures I don't know about...I have no digital camera. Sorry....but I like your site...

[Fidget]

nice stuff...here in canada the S2 comes with the x600 and that should be a very nice video card as well. Myaunt decided to replace the S1 in her office and i made sure i directed her to the S2 since it is a sweet machine for sure. she just ordered on but it looks like a 2 week delay here in canada. sucks but oh well.

[mcyi]

x600...my past zd8000 had an x600 you check out the scores on the HP Part of the Forums..but thats cool!!

[Fidget]

yeah it is really sweet....one more week and i will get to play with her s2....at least if it is on time i should be able to play with it then...i'll let you know what i think after i have had a look at it, the x600 should be super sweet.

[nlk10010]

New poster (obviously) but I've been watching these and similar boards for months trying to figure out what notebook to get. I needed a somewhat portable desktop replacement on which to do database/web programming (I'm not a gamer at all, although "there's nothing wrong with that" :) ) and which could be taken to client sites.

After going crazy thinking about Sager, Dell, Acer, HP, etc. and even going so far as to purchase a Toshiba M45-S351 and then returning it, I decided to go with a Toshiba Tecra S2. Basically, it seemed several on this board gave the Tecras high marks and I liked the way my M45 worked. The machine felt solid, the software worked well, etc. It was just that I wanted XP Pro, a faster hard drive and other goodies. I ordered from Toshiba on-line and the thing was shipped within 5 days. Got it a couple of days ago.

So far it seems pretty good, except I've got to tell you: turning it on for the first time I expected a smooth transition; i.e. standard Welcome to Windows screens, etc. What I got was something like "Completing Configuration, DO NOT INTERRUPT" after which a few cryptic dialogs were displayed (e.g. "Do you want to complete installation"?, "Touchpad not installed", "Can't find this or that driver" etc.) and finally the system hung. I did a three-fingered salute and seemed to coax it to a finish but I was EXTREMELY disappointed. Apart from that, however, on the reboot things seemed to work fine, for the most part, although somehow the Boot priority had LAN first and I kept getting error messages and the DVD drive doesn't seem to recognize my DVDs. Not much free space left on that 7200 drive, either. But the MAIN things that drew me to the Toshiba seem present; solid feel, smooth operation, 802.11g not bad, etc.

I'll continue to explore the Tecra of course but I'll leave the in-depth analysis to those who are more experienced with this stuff. Of course, if anyone has specific questions, particularly about the suitability of this machine for VS.NET, Delphi, etc., I'd be glad to try to answer them.

=NLK=

[Fidget]

nice to hear from you about your new system, i think that the problem you have had with it sounds like it is out of the ordinary and i would talk to toshiba about it. the hdd space thing is definately something that i think sounds like it is not right, cal them and see what is up.

i will let you know what the new system is like on my end, as soon as i get to play with it. maybe i will be able to shed some light on whether this is an abnormality or if it is how they all come. but from what i know it doesnt sound right.

either way it is a power system and should be more than capable. enjoy it, have fun, and welcome to the forums

[nlk10010]

nice to hear from you about your new system, i think that the problem you have had with it sounds like it is out of the ordinary and i would talk to toshiba about it. the hdd space thing is definately something that i think sounds like it is not right, cal them and see what is up.

i will let you know what the new system is like on my end, as soon as i get to play with it. maybe i will be able to shed some light on whether this is an abnormality or if it is how they all come. but from what i know it doesnt sound right.

either way it is a power system and should be more than capable. enjoy it, have fun, and welcome to the forums

Fidget. I think in fact you were one of the posters that turned me on to the Tecra line in general and the S2 in particular. I wouldn't have posted as readily about my general experiences except that I know this is a relatively new model and people are hungry for information, ANY information. :mmm:

I'm going to see how things go; I'm hesitant to talk to Toshiba because, even though there are probably some good techs there, the likelihood is I'll get a dunce and end up having to ship the thing back for a couple of weeks to a month. Resetting the boot priority cured the error on POST; I'm still investigating the DVD drive, which works OK with the supplied SONIC software but not with RETROSPECT or some other backup programs. The in-and-out wireless may be the machine or may be my BuffaloTech bridges/AP which have been giving me trouble with my RTVs as well. The battery life sucks but I expected that. The 52GB is probably right given the recovery partition which I need to delete (I burned recovery CDs), but it was my choice to get the 60GB 7200 HD.

As I say, Toshiba still seems to make a solid product. I hope I can figure things out in the few days that remain on my return period.

Again, appreciate the time you took to post.

=NLK=

[OldPueblo]

After a ton of research, this looks like the laptop for me. I can't believe I actually found one with everything I needed! My criteria was new Centrino tech, PCIe gaming card, little mouse nub in middle of keyboard (hate touchpads), firewire, card reader, serial port (for connecting to our hardware), option for fast hard drives, and a great price. If you think about it, that makes it very unique. I'd definitely appreciate any follow-up you guys might have on it since I have to wait a few weeks before purchasing anyway.

Edit: Forgot, also has bluetooth for my new pda phone coming soon and the 802.11a/b/g option! Here's the bad news, I just found out my job is providing a laptop for me. There goes my justification. Jerks!

[fg3]

I've got an S2 ordered... hopefully will be here Friday or Monday...

Specs I went with:
INTEL PM 1.73GHZ
WIFI 802.11G (INTEL)
BLUETOOTH V1.2
NVIDIA GEFORCE 128MB
60GB HDD 5400 RPM
15" UXGA TFT DISPLAY
1024MB (512+512)
CD-RW/DVD-ROM

It's for work, and the main reason I went with the S2 is because I need the 1600x1200 res and my company only buys Toshiba laptops, so my options were limited. I must say though, the S2 seems like it'll be a great machine.

I'll let you know how I like it once I get it... the lack of info. on this machine is killing me!

[Fidget]

nlk10010 thanks for the appreciation man, its no problem at all, its what the forums are here for, and i really think your machine should be a good one, sounds like you have things under control.

as for the issues you talked about oldpueblo, i think the S2 sounds like a good choice. the gaming will be great on it, should power through your games for the near future. the s2 has it all really....

[voidar]

Does your S2 have an ExpressCard slot?

[Fidget]

i will check the next time i have an s2 near me for this one...

[voidar]

According to some .pdf (found it on this board) from expresscard.org, both M3 and S2 have one CardBus and one ExpressCard slot. The specs of the S2 mention nothing of this.

[bcsan]

I have question how does the S2 handle heat and fan noise?

[nlk10010]

Does your S2 have an ExpressCard slot?

I scoured the Detailed Specifications on Toshiba's site and THOSE docs indicate that the S2 does NOT have an ExpressCard slot. I say that with some confidence as the Detailed Specs for the M series DOES indicate an ExpressCard slot.

Examining my machine seems to confirm this: it's got a double PCCard slot and something underneath it which has a label I can't read. Problem is, it doesn't seem to open up so it's probably the infamous "dummy" ExpressCard slot.

Oh, well, can't have everything. Even if it did I have this sneaking suspicion that, being one of the first implementations of Expresscard "technology", it will prove to be buggy and incompatible with later cards. But that's just to make me feel better. :)

=NLK=

[The_Book_Man]

expresscard.org does NOT list the Tecra S2 as one of the machines supporting Expresscard capability.

[The_Book_Man]

I just ordered a Tecra S2 :D , mainly because I have had a Satellite and a Satellite Pro in the past and I like what I hear about the Tecra line being made tough :smash: and because I wanted the option of a HDD faster than 4600rpm (the only option for the Satellite M45 which I was considering before buying the Tecra S2). I got the 60GB drive with 7200rpm. :bouncy:

I also decided on the 1.86GHz processor, thanks to a little encouragement from mcyi on this forum--plus I may have this notebook for 3-4 years, so I wanted to go high end with this.

I got 1 512MB memory module and am planning to get a second 1GB module from a third party--partly for the price, and especially because Toshiba indicates a delay for this and Kingston indicates they are out of stock.

But here's my question: I decided to get the 1600 x 1200 native resolution--mainly because I do a lot of text document comparison with multiple windows open side-by-side, and I figured I would be able to fit more readable texts on the screen with this higher resolution. But is this higher resolution going to give me problems running certain types of programs? :uhoh: I don't do a lot of gaming, but I watch a lot of DVDs, and also I want to get into video editing.

I don't even know if I can change my order at this point, but what can others tell me about the pros and cons of the 1600 x 1200 resolution?

[Raist3d]

It's like they offer exactly what I want except for one key thing. For the Tecra S2 is the lack of an CASV/Xbrite type display. ARGGGH!

- Raist

[Fidget]

the high resolution will be great for when you do video editing and movies...makes things look sharper and cleaner. you wont regret getting that one, i only wish it was a trubrite screen...

[Tiebird]

Gaming is great! The Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 is amazing! A great graphics card and puts out amazingly. It doesn't show in the benchmarks but in real time gaming it gives a great smooth reaction! Almost looks real!

Benchmarks:

Aquamark: 36,584
3DMark05: 1548
3DMark03: 5134
3DMark01: 13,984



I have been seeing some conflicting info on the tos website and here on the forums. would you be able to check in the device manager to see what the 6600 registers as, and under PowerStrip what the cards OEM clock frequinces are?

[tlo]

can you guys list the price you paid with your specs for comparison? thanks

[Cassegrain]

Here is the configuration:

TECRA S2
INTEL PM 2.00GHZ
MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PRO (SP2)
MICROSOFT OFFICE TRIAL PRO
256MB*
15" UXGA TFT DISPLAY
NVIDIA GEFORCE 128MB
60GB HDD (7200 RPM)
DVD SUPER MULTI SNGL LAYER
WIN-DVD CREATOR
INTEL PRO 802.11ABG WIRELESS**
BLUETOOTH V1.2
10/100/1000 GIGABIT ETHERNET
6 CELL BATTERY
MICROSOFT WORKS
1 YEAR STANDARD WARRANTY
NO FDD

*Hynix PC2700S-25330 256MB DDR 333MHz CL2.5
**Turned off while testing


After starting up, and installing Windows updates, Norton Anti-Virus 2005 updates, but nothing else, I ran 3DMARK05 Free Edition on AC power, with default settings:

Tests
====
Game Test 1: Selected
Game Test 2: Selected
Game Test 3: Selected
CPU Tests: 2 of 2
Feature Tests: 0 of 5
Batch Size Tests: 0 of 6

Settings
======
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Anti-Aliasing: None
Filtering: Optimal
HLSL VS Target: 3_0
HLSL PS Target: 3_0
Fixed Framerate: Off

System
======
GFX: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor
OS: Microsoft Windows XP


3DMark05: 1888 3DMarks

Then I installed 2GB RAM (from NewEgg):
2 SODIMM KINGMAX 1GB DDR333 MSAD42D-KI

Then using the same settings as before:

3DMark05: 1948 3DMarks

[deepu]

Can S2 be used for .Net and Java development ?

[swcaps7]

how's battery life and heat?

[Fidget]

heats not an issue with the S2 i have used, as for the battery life, its not the absolute best but it gets what toshiba says it will get you so its not at all bad....