Introduction

Toshiba Canada recently sent us their latest Satellite model, the P100 (dell latitude d620 battery) , for review. This unit is aimed squarely at the fattest portion of the notebook computer market bell curve — the home PC market.

This notebook is not without its pedigree; the Satellite range is Toshiba’s long-running notebook line that traces (dell latitude d820 battery )it roots to the very first truly portable computers in the late 80′s. Over time it a1078 has been super-ceded by the Tecra business line, but it still probably constitutes the lion’s share of Toshiba’s notebook sales in North America. These notebooks are ubiquitous in retailers across the continent, a testament to their good value and solid reputation.

The P100 is the first notebook (dell latitude d600 battery )that I have tested that features Intel’s new dual core mobile platform Core Duo. The launch of Core Duo came at a time when Intel had pretty well sewn up the mobile performance crown. They probably dell inspiron e1505 battery could have rested on their laurels for another six months? – possibly longer.

As the owner of an AMD Turion notebook, and the reviewer of many Intel notebooks, I can honestly say that there is a huge difference between the seamless integration of Intel’s Centrino technologies and AMD’s sm rg sbord approach. Hopefully AMD dell latitude d830 battery has been watching and learning because the addition of Core Duo to the Centrino platform stands to make what was already a big performance gap into a gaping chasm.

In Canada the P100 xps m1730 battery comes in two flavors; the P100-J100 ($1,999 CDN) and the P100-J500 gd761 ($2,399). The primary differences between the two are processor (T2300 versus T2400), memory (512 MB versus 1024 MB) and hard drive (100 GB versus 120 GB). Toshiba sent us the higher-end model for review.? In the U.S. this notebook is customizable via the ToshibaDirect.com website Satellite P100-ST7111 model.

Furthermore, the Satellite P105 model is essentially the same as the P100 xps m1530 battery, but available with a higher end configuration graphics graphics card for certain SKUs.? If you’re buying the P105, most aspects of this review apply to this model too.? Retail stores mostly carry the P105.

Specs:

  • Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz processor
  • 17-inch glossy widescreen (1440 x 900)
  • nVidia 7300 Go graphics card
  • 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • 1GB RAM
  • 802.11 a/b/g Wireless via Intel 3945abg card
  • DVD dual layer burner

Design and Build

Toshiba’s hyperactive design department is at it again. It seems as though they start from scratch with new case and chassis designs every single year. Some of Toshiba’s past designs have been revolutionary, but the P100 ibm thinkpad t60 battery is a refinement of the designs that came before it. It possesses a matte silver interior finish with piano black speakers that looks refined and understated. The faux copper lid looks great and distinguishes the P100 from the myriad generic-looking models on the market.

Toshiba’s chassis designs continue to get stiffer and better. The P100 is extremely solid feeling with no flex at all (hand rests or lid). The keyboard is also very stiff — in the same league as ThinkPads (maybe even stiffer than my T40 dell latitude d630 battery) although the key feel is not quite as good.

Glossy apple ibook g4 battery screens are still all the rage on home notebooks, and the P100 uses Toshiba’s TruBrite screen coating. The result is a great looking high contrast 17" display that would be ideal for movie watching. Native resolution for the screen is 1440 x 900 pixels. The viewing angle on this screen is fantastic. There is no ghosting whatsoever.

This is a big notebook — it has to be in order to accommodate its 17" screen. Unlike a 17" Apple MacBook that looks kind of ridiculous with its little keyboard, the P100 features a full keyboard with separate numeric keypad. It fills the space nicely.

With a weight of just under 8 lbs, the P100 is far from light, but it does not seem heavy when you carry it around. This opinion might change if I took it on the road with me, but for lugging around the house the P100 would be fine. On the other hand, the power brick for the P100 is a monster. I would recommend that moving it room to room be full extent of its portability.

Processor and Performance

Where Centrino was great, Core Duo is simply out of this a1189 world. In many tests you are getting performance that is in-line with dual core Athlon64 desktop CPUs. And it goes without saying that Core Duo is faster than Intel’s Pentium 4 desktop CPU line. When you factor in the modest power requirements the performance of these chips is simply incredible.

Intel gave the Centrino platform a slight boost in order to a1012 get the most from this new CPU. We see the front side bus speed increasing to 667 MHz from 533 MHz.

The P100 uses Intel’s i945PM core logic chipset and ICH7 Southbridge (handling I/O duties). Like most systems based on this platform, the P100 uses DDR2 RAM operating at 533 MHz (up to a maximum of 4 GB). It is a1022 possible to add faster RAM (ideally 667 MHz to match the front side bus speed), but that would have increased the price.

Where you will see a benefit to having all this apple powerbook g4 battery power will be in intensive tasks such as media encoding and multitasking scenarios. Games are just starting to come out that take advantage of dual core processors, but eventually most applications will be multi threaded as personal computing goes parallel (with more and more CPU cores rather than a single CPU core operating at incredibly high clock speeds and generating tons of heat).

Super Pi results for the P100 apple macbook pro battery are consistent with what we having been seeing from Core Duo processors — in other words blazingly fast.? At 1 minute 22 seconds the T2400 is about 20% faster than a 2 GHz AMD Turion. The PCMark05 score of 3358 is also very good for a notebook.

This performance comes at a price and that is battery life. The fast dual core processor and big screen overwhelm the P100′s little 4000mAh battery. DVD viewing time away from a power plug was only 1 hour and fifteen minutes, consistent with the Battery Eater Pro benchmark I ran. As a point of reference, an average single core 15"? Pentium-M notebook would see about 3 hours of battery life from a charge. To be honest, this notebook was never intended to be a travel companion — it is more suited to home use. Keeping this in?mind I would not hold the battery performance against the P100.

According to the SATA specifications a SATA hard drive conserves a bit more energy than regular ATA. While this spec also provides more bandwidth for improved I/O performance, the typical notebook hard drive will not benefit. The biggest benefit to SATA in a current notebook is that you will be able to upgrade to a larger capacity in a few years when regular ATA is just a memory.

Even with Turbo Cache and the boosted video memory, you might have a hard time playing a really demanding game like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on the P100. It should play older or less demanding games nicely. In 3DMark05 the P100 pa3399u-1brs scored a disappointing 1,665 points. This is a bit slower than last year’s NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 and well off the pace of the ATI’s Mobility RADEON X600 and X700 (older technology that now competes at this price point). If you need the fastest video system, Toshiba recently introduced a gamer-centric version of the P100 that uses the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS (Toshiba Satellite P105-S921). We will try to get our hands on one for a review.

While you won’t be playing the latest games, you will be able to enjoy movies on the P100 pa3465u-1brs . NVIDIA’s GeForce Go 7300 includes NVIDIA’s PureVideo technology for hardware acceleration of High Definition (HD) video content. Unlike ATI who limits HD playback performance based on the GPU (i.e. you need to buy the fastest video chip in order to hardware decode the highest resolution HD content), even the least expensive NVIDIA chips that support PureVideo will decode any type of HD content. Sadly, you will need to buy either NVIDIA’s decoder or DVD playback software designed to take advantage of the GeForce Go 7300′s capabilities.

Audio

The last generation of the Centrino platform introduced Intel’s High Definition Audio specification. This replaced AC/97, which was getting very long in the tooth. It is essentially a competent soft audio solution coupled with a good quality multi-channel codec.

Toshiba uses the Conexant CX20551-22 audio codec. I have not seen (or heard) this chip before and could not find product information for it on Conexant’s website, but I must say that it sounds great when pumping audio to the Harman Kardon speakers. They were easily the best speakers I have tested on a laptop.

Wireless and Communications

Intel’s Pro Wireless 3945 ABG solution works great and covers all of the current wireless LAN standards. 802.11A is not very common, but that is exactly its appeal. In WiFi congested neighborhoods it is nice to be able to pa3356u-1brs use the relative uncrowded 5GHz band of 802.11A (you will need a router that supports it though).

Toshiba’s Toshiba ConfigFree software does a great job of keeping you connected. I have always liked this software — much like IBM’s ThinkVantage software I think it help differentiate Toshiba’s products from the competition.

There is no Bluetooth, but I am not sure that this is a feature most home users really want or need. Personally I can’t live without it as I have numerous devices that require it (such as cell phones). ?

A Built-in multinational 56K V.90 modem, and 10/100 Ethernet are provided in case you have to revert to wried mode.

Ports and Slots

The P100 includes the common CardBus slot. No ExpressCard toshiba here, but there are not many cards available in that format yet.

A 5-in-1 Multimedia port (supporting SD, Memory Stick , Memory Stick Pro, MMC, xD-Picture Card ) makes it easy to download pictures from digital cameras.

Ports include: 4 USB 2.0, Firewire, external microphone port, headphone port, VGA, DVI and S-Video out.

Heat and Noise

The P100 runs quite cool. During testing — including lots of benchmark runs, the unit never became hot to the touch. I used the P100 on a solid surface at all times so the vents were unobstructed.

Toshiba employed a fancy touchpad surface on the P100. It has an option button’ that when pressed allows you to activate a number of shortcuts. You get a visual cue that the short-cut mode has been activated when the touchpad becomes illuminated. It is a pretty nice technology and works well — it is quite easy to toggle on/off for access to short cuts. Like most notebooks in this class you also have a series of media control buttons above the keyboard.

Final Thoughts

Toshiba’s P100 series is a really nice home computer. It packs more punch than many desktops into a very small amount of space. With more than enough power for typical home computing tasks the P100 would be a fine choice as a family computer.

Build quality is excellent and it does not get hot or loud. Its smart looks won’t look out of place in your environment.

Value is a little tougher to measure. With its big screen and quality components I think the P100-J100 in particular seems to be a good value (and I have seen it at retailers for about $100 less MSRP).

Suggestions to Toshiba: I might use a slightly stronger video processor as there is a huge difference between the Go 7300 used in this model and the Go 7900 GS used in the opt of the line gamer edition of the P100. The P100′s beautiful screen cries out for games