Do you like your Toshiba?

[aigle]

if any of you have read about the Sony Vaios, they're apparently a NIGHTMARE to reformat and reinstall Windows.
:-)

I can,t understand why its, like this. Never thought that reformat and windows reinstall can be related to laptop brand!!

[PowerMatt]

Ever done any computer work? Brand most certainly makes a difference in how easy it is to do something like reformatting it. Like HP/Compaq's tendency to pack all your restoration data on a special hidden partiton. Loose your hard drive and you'll be spending $200+ for a new copy of XP (plus the hard drive). Not to mention what a pain in the butt that hidden partition is to get rid of should you want to. Anyway, enough ranting.

I bought a Satellite A105-2031 a couple days ago, and so far I love it. I was somewhat skeptical of the plain design at first, but after looking at the overly busy HP/Compaq's, it really grew on me. These new Celeron M's are nothing like their predecessors, either. The dark blue lid is cool... it's not black or grey (both way overused in my opinion). Time will tell if it lasts, but if it's anything like my ancient Satellite 1555CDS (which still works perfectly)... well, we'll see.

[the_cubanate]

The worse computer work I got was for a Compaq. For some reason they decided to pack the only partition software the bios would allow to run into the same harddrive. You had to set the HDD settings for a particular value and the program would show magically there. Even after formatting the harddrive.

[machanic]

I love my Toshiba Satellite M30X

Its great and reaches my needs and it was very cheap only £450

[moviegeek]

I just got a Satellite A105-2031 at Office Depot for $500(after MIR) and I love it.Unfortunatly this model is discontinued but all the A105 series are a good buy.

[wobble987]

Does anyone notice that air gaps in the laptop chasis is quite a common problem on toshibas in general? Ive used several models and many have had it. Now, just in case you dont know what an air gap is, its where you can press down on a certain part of the laptop (like the palmrest for say), and you will feel the plastic go in a tiny wee bit before you feel it hit another piece of plastic underneath. What this means, is that there is a tiny space between the two pieces of material...

isn't this for safety purposes; eg. when the notebook is drop the "air gaps" will soften the blow?

[zadillo]

I can,t understand why its, like this. Never thought that reformat and windows reinstall can be related to laptop brand!!

The problem comes from the difficulty in obtaining the custom drivers, etc. that the laptop uses. With Sony Vaios at least, it can often be difficult to download the specific drivers you need if you choose to do a plain old Windows install, rather than reinstall from the custom install discs (or the custom install partition, whatever).

If the manufacturer makes those drivers easily available to download separately, then it becomes much easier to just do a plain fresh install of Windows and then install the drivers yourself. Otherwise, you need to do their custom install of Windows and remove the excess stuff you don't want yourself.

-Zadillo

[Whistler]

I just got an A100 and it seems great so far.

I started off with an HP dv1635... It was a great machine, I loved the size and the screen and some of its features... but a couple weeks after owning it I realized that the screen was crooked. It was either warped or attached wrong, so I brought it back.

Store was all out of 1635s, so they offered to upgrade me to a 1650 for 100$ more... Wasn't extremely happy (I was mad at myself for spending so much on the 1635 to begin with... student ) but I agreed.

Got the 1650 back home and it had the same problem but WORSE... went back to the store and they opened every 1650 in the store (3) and they all had the same screen problem in various states. The one with the best screen had a horribly misaligned keyboard.

So, they swapped it for a Toshiba A100 with basically the same specs... the only big difference is the Toshiba is 15.4 instead of 14 inch and has the core duo 2050 instead of 2300 (different FSB), but, the Toshiba was 300$ CHEAPER, so I got all that back, and the Toshibas build quality makes the HP look like it was slapped together by monkeys.

I loved the dv1000 design but I couldnt imagine bringing it back and forth to school without it breaking in a month. It was built as bad as a Dell. I don't like the looks of the Toshiba as much, but the build quality is worth the boring design.

[realitybias]

Angry about my P100-s9012

Its GPU reaches 100 degrees, enough to shut down the computer and injur any user who dares place it on his lap. It also comes with two different brands of network management for the network card, which conflict with each other. Buggy as hell..

but it plays games nicely

[Pharoke]

Well just picked up my P105-S9312 and so far I love it. Have to agree with realitybias on the network management software casuing issues but I disabled the config free software or whatever it is called and everything works great. 7900GS is more than enough for me and is by far adequate enough for gaming.