Toshiba Satellite M40 Review - ALKY - Page 2

Holy crap!!!! $1500 us .... thats so cheap wish I was in canada

Hi all
Bought mine few weeks ago for 1799 Can.
It is a very good programming/gaming machine.
Fast in games


NOW AT FUTURE SHOP IT IS AT 1699..
At that price its a steal.

I would be happy to buy that laptop for $2000 us and your getting it for like $1300.....toshiba US sucks

thats how it breaks, it really seems like toshiba likes canada alot, they give us all sorts of goodies, some of them even before they hit the US....

aint that the truth

Graphics Controller

First of all, I am intending on purchasing this M40, upon answers to my following question. I have compared the offered video cards for the M40, and for most models of M40 whether at FutureShop, Staples, or even my University, it comes with Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 with 128MB DDR shared video memory. I am just curious as to the quality of this video card compared to the 'almighty' NVIDIA® GeForce™ FX Go 6600.

Given this be the only difference, is the system still good? or does it require the memory upgrade to 1GB?

Yes Google is my friend here, that is how I found this forum!

we got our M40's 2 weeks before the "official" release date! Paid more, but it was worth it.

There are currently two M40 models in stores right now, and one of them has the intel chipset. The one with the "extreme graphics" is the M40-JM8. The M40-SF3 has the Nvidia Go 6600.

To answer your question, the 6600 will be significantly better when it comes to graphically intensive applications such as Photoshop even more important when it comes to games.

Upgrading to 1GB of memory will help things such as load times and gaming performance. I would personally recommend it, the expansion slot is there for a reason!

The current incarnation of M40 (not M40X which is a Celeron based system) has these models: the M40 SF300E and the M40 JM800E.
the SF3 has the GeForce card with 128 MB of dedicated memory, the JM8 has the Intel graphics with shared memory.
Depending on what you use the laptop for you will be satisfied or not with each offering.
I have the M40 YP3, GeForce with 128 MB of dedicated memory as well as a faster HDD, it spins @ 5400 rpm whereas the new M40's HDD is 4200 rpm. It was only available for about 3 or 4 months. I am VERY pleased with this machine, it is my first laptop and it ROCKS!
The graphics are incredible, handles anything I can throw at it. If you think you might do some gaming or graphic intense apps, go for the better offering.

where you at?

the short and sweet of it is this:

go 6600 128mb = gaming power, graphic intensive apps, strong performance right across the board

intel extreme integrated graphics = no gaming, less graphics intensive apps, decent but not great performance generally.

personally i would get the one with the higher video card (the 6600) since even if you are not gaming you dont know what you are going to be doing in teh future and if your system has a lower end card now a year from now if your requirements change you will be out of luck. at least with a good card now you may still have a chance if your needs change.

the system out of the box is a good one. many people choose to make the upgrade to 1gb o ram because it sees the most significant performance jump compared to maxing it out to 2gb. 512mb is okay for alot but not everything, i would say game with 1gb if you are just doing office and word processing 512mb is enough and there will be no need to upgrade no matter what machine you choose.

also as a side note the intel integrated graphics eat some of your system ram. so if you are running it on a system with only 512mb of ram and the graphics card ram utilization set at 128mb video your system will only really be running on 384mb of ram. personally i would say that for xp you need that not to mention any other programs you are running. imho 512mb is what i typically would say is just for xp and that, but if you want to do more i would say make the upgrade to 1gb, its not that expensive. the two biggest and easiest ways to make your notebook faster are replacing the ram and the hdd. also keep in mind that the hdd upgrade can end up voiding your warranty if not done properly so consult toshiba first, ram wont though so it is the first place to upgrade.

Graphics Controller

Thanks to Everyone who responded to my posting so quickly. It has definately changed my decision into not purchasing the M40 w/ the Intel card. Was intentionally going to purchase from my school, as it seems to be cheapest, but I guess I'll have to look around just to get the GeForce card.

Can your school order one in for you at a better price?

Yes, they can definitely beat the price offered at FutureShop or Staples (Business Depot). BTW, I from comparing prices I have found in many cases that Staples do offer Cheaper pricing than FutureShop EVEN AFTER the so called "discounts" and promo's. Anyways, most universities do end up having the cheapest price for laptops but ofcourse it just depends if you are lucky enough to have them have the particular laptop model you want. This is mainly b/c they purchase in stocks and educ. institutions sometimes get discounts as well.

my university is really only cheaper when it comes to apple stuff... for toshiba it is only like $50 and i would have to wait, for me the convenience is worth it sadly to go somewhere else...

I am considering to get the Toshiba M40, and wondering, did anybody get any dead pixels on their LCD screen. And what does the 1 year limited warranty covers. Maybe someone can direct me a website where I can get such details, I tried look for it at www.toshiba.com but didn't find anything.

Thanks