? on which one to buy

Big difference in average price and features...

You need to expand on what you intent to do ...and what you want to do with this pc.

once you do that...many people here can help you pick.

yeah there really are big differences in the intended usages of these machines, and for us to make a good recomendation then we must have some more info on what your going to be doing with it. after that your likely going to get a flood of help...

Yea, and theat least in the satelites there are very big differences among models. Which models are you looking and what do you want them for?

CAD...i would lean towards the satellite...as the Qosmio stuff would not benefit you as much as P4 processing would.

The only thing the qosmio would do for you would be the 500 cd/m2 display that the Qosmio would give you. The 17" on the satellite will be about 220 cd/m2.

cd/m2 is a measure of bruightness, I think it means candles per square meter, but the idea is the more the brighter.

While I've never used cad myself, from what I've read for cad, apart from the P4, you'll also want to look into a better gpu (I hear that the gpu is actually more important than the CPU) than what is in the satellite you mention. Look for one with dedicated ram as opposed to integrated/shared since these will eat into you system RAM and bog down the cpu a bit.

The qoosimo's a nice machine, seems to be built for different needs (mostly home entertainment/big time multimedia), but in my opinion, the graphics card and rendering capabilities would be much better for cad than the one in the satellite you mention.

oops....I did not see the IGP ati video card...that would be a NO for the Satellite.

as goonter mentioned..find a discreet/dedicate video system.

Look at the P30.

dedicated graphics is a must for cad, simply put you will absolutely need the higher powered graphics card in any cad application....so that should be your biggest concern.

oh and yes... cd/m2 is a measurment of brightness.

I have this one, think it will work well for him? It has a P4 3.4ghz and a dedicated 128mb gefore fx go5700. $1900 (closeout)

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshi...oductDetail.do

should work fine for him....but i have heard that toshiba has difficulties with parts for this series so that may weigh in his decision....

also for serisus design work you may want to look into machines that are built for design, as in mobile professional workstations. these include the dell m70, IBM t42/43 (high end with fire gl graphics), sager 9880 with quadro fx 1400 card....none of those is really a budget choice but they are very very powerful systems designed with heavy duty graphics work and cad in mind. most of thse systems fully configured will run in excess of $4000 canadian, and some closer to $6000 canadian fully loaded.

in the event that money is not really a limiting factor and you absolutely have to have the most power out there those would be the best options for cad work. in the toshiba range the higher end systems are all going to be good, just avoid integrated graphics, look for a 128mb+ graphics card, so the tecra S2, A4 (in the USA at least), Qosmio g20, and the canadian m40 are really good options. i excluded the f1o/15 that you suggested as well as the p30 and the p20/25 series because they are non-pci express machines, although this is not a huge issue, a pci-express machine will last longer as it is a newer design. as well typically pci express machines have better performance.

Yep for autocad you need something with a real OpenGL videocard.

Toshiba wise :
i would advise either the p30 with a p4 and a 9700 radeon that should be ok.
or if you can bare the smaller screen:
the M40 with its Gforce 6600 should be faster display wise.

But if you are planning to do some serious autocad then myabe lean toward a desktop replacement like Sager or the dells xps2, but then the prices are much higher.

Currently in mid price range, after much comparison i'm about to buy the M40 with the 6600 has it is fast enough for 3dmax fast enough for most demanding games, and light enough to stay a laptop.
Also i plan to do some DevStudio C++ graphic programming and that should be enough.

Again im not an autocad user.

hope it helps

a very good friend of mine is a hardcore cad user alot with a massive amout of other design programs and he personally uses the sager 9880 with the quadro fx card, its the best on the market currently for card, but it is not cheap.... however some of the others in his office use toshiba m40's and dell 9300's and although they are not as fast they are very solid stable machines for it and are perfectly usable just not got as much power.