A100-jh2

I just saw the new A100-JH2 Toshiba 14.1WXGA laptop with Intel core Duo. Pretty clean and neat chassis for a toshiba. I wonder if there's a 2ndary battery option, by swapping the CDROM/DVDROM... Any hint ?

 

Do you mean the M100? I don't think there is any 14.1" A100... Anyways, Toshiba didn't put in a swappable bay option unforunately - it's built-in However, I do believe Toshiba offers an extended battery option.

 

Here in Canada, there is an M100 that is 14.1". Futureshop carry it for ~$1700.

There is also the Toshiba A100 JH2, which is a 15.4" with a 1.66 Core Duo and 128mb X1600. This is likely going to be my first laptop, but I can't find any reviews anywhere. Has anyone else come across any?

Edit: Lychee is right, the 14.1" is NOT an "A", it's an "M".

 

I'm pretty sure you guys mean the M100 as that's the 14inch line for toshiba the A100 is 15.4 and the P100 is 17inch. I looked at the A100 and M100 today at futureshop and i'm dissappointed in the M100's screen it's as bad as the 630m samsung screens with the graininess.

 

Pretty sad - Toshiba's screens are usually one of their strong points.

 

Yah totally i was impressed with the screen on the M70 i got and i was looking to pick up the M100 to try out the new coreduo guess i'll wait and see if they'll do something about the screen.

 

Alright, sorry if I'm bumping an old thread, but I got my hands on one of these a while ago, and ran 3dMarks05. I could just get the "demo" version though, that doesn't let you change settings. Is that what everyone else uses? Anyway, the result (X1600 128mb) was 2557. Hope that helps someone decide!

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the A100-JH2 have X1400 graphics? Even the manufacturer's site list it as having so.

http://www.toshiba.ca/web/product.grp?lg=en&section=1&group=1&product=5611&part=4530#spectop

 

Yes - cy007 is correct - the A100 series in Canada has 128MB of the ATI X1400 GPU.

 

There is a full review of this laptop over on the notebook forum. I skated over here hoping to find one here too... I do like the look of this machine, but the Vaio Fe is very tempting...!
Guess I'll have to head to pc world and check the machines out again. Only their satellite a100s tend to be the celeron versions, but at least I'd get to test the build which is my main concern at the moment, having suffered with my M30x.

 

i put up the review on the notebookforums, and yes it does have an ATI RADEON MOBILITY X1600 that has be downclocked a bit to conserve power and keep heat down.. also i don't think it has Hypermemory like some other notebooks with x1600s do... pretty good notebook for the money.. still has a few buggy issues that seem to be software related..

 

Hmm...

I'm not getting the X1600 GPU in the A100 series in North America - just the X1400. That's too bad because I think that a better GPU like the X1600 would make for a big plus in buying this notebook.

 

Sorry dude, my mistake. Checked it out today and it indeed comes with a Mobility Radeon X1600. Not a bad laptop. Might be getting myself one as a matter of fact. Say, would ati's default drivers work with the downclocked radeon? I'm assuming the bios is what that sets the clockspeed of the card?

edit: Could you please tell me what toshiba clocked the card at? I'm curious as to how much they downclocked things.

 

Just bought this notebook and am very pleased-runs Halo with full settings and crunches through Photoshop quickly. Here are some of the clock settings

Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
Device ID 71C5
Vendor 1002
Subsystem ID FF10
Subsystem Vendor ID 1179
Bus Type PCI Express
Current Bus Setting PCI Express
BIOS Version 009.012.001.000
BIOS Part Number XXX-A65001-001
BIOS Date 2006/01/14
Memory Size 128 MB
Memory Type DDR2
Core Clock in MHz 392 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 252 MHz
Primary Display Yes

 

Check here for some performance data on the x1600
http://www.mobilityguru.com/2005/12/05/ati_mobility_radeon_x1600/page8.html

 

There seems to be some really mixed opinions about this A100-JH2.
Lets get to the bottom of the video card issue. The manufacturer and retailer websites all state that this machine is equipped with a ATI Mobility X1400 with 128 MB Shared Memory. .. but the computer clearly has a X1600 (trust me, i own one).. I beleive that the European equivalent of this laptop is called the A100-153, and the difference here is that the 153 has a 6-cell battery and an X1600 256MB ram. HOWEVER, This A100-JH2 comes will a 9-cell battery (contrary to even the toshiba.ca website) and it clearly has the X1600. THe ATI Catalyst Control center reports the video card as follows:

Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
Device ID 71C5
Vendor 1002
Subsystem ID FF10
Subsystem Vendor ID 1179
Bus Type PCI Express
Current Bus Setting PCI Express
BIOS Date 2006/03/15
Memory Size 512 MB
Memory Type HyperMemory
Core Clock in MHz 398 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 378 MHz

ANd the Windows System Info reports:

Name ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_71C5&SUBSYS_FF101179&REV_00\4&31B7BFB9&0&0008
Adapter Type ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 (0x71C5)
Adapter Description ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
Adapter RAM 512.00 MB (536,870,912 bytes)

Having read many reviews and comments of this and similar machines, its still unclear what the grafix adapter is. I read that the X1600 should have a much higher clock speed, and therefore, they advertise this as an X1400 because it is underclocked. As for the video memory, both the ATI and Windows software look like its treating it as having 256MB of dedicated memory, and 256MB of shared RAM. Is there a way to verify this?

Ok, now as for the BUG: If you set the ATI Powerplay to the Optimal Battery Life setting, the screen gets completely garbled, and you will have to reboot into safe mode to disable it. My fix is to disable the ATI Powerplay until a fix is made.
As for the drivers, apparantly, the Drivers for this machine are ATI Catalyst normal drivers, as the ATI Mobility drivers do not support the X1000 series cards. Im sure there will be an update soon. As for now, it runs very smooth, and the video card performs quite nicely, even when pushed hard.

Hope this helps anyone looking into this machine.
And if anyone knows how to check for video RAM, let me know!

thanks

ep.

 

Yep, its a x1600 for sure. I bought one from future shop. They had some trouble identifying it too since they hand changed the display card to say x1600 from x1400. I actually wasn't sure myself until i checked it in the control centre, the x1400 is decent enough but getting the x1600 was a pleasant surprise.

 

Another thing...
I have been running Notebook Hardware Control to monitor the temperatures and chip freqencies.. What I have noticed is that during normal operation, the chip(chassis) temperature used to be around 22(35) degrees celcius, and now it is reporting as 09(35) degrees celcius (that is 50(95) degrees farenheit). I cant explain why the chip temperature is reporting so low... and why it happened all of a sudden. I have tried other temperature reporting tools, but it seems to be correct. Any ideas?

EP

 

Just got this a few days ago and im lovin it so far.
Just wondering if anyone has been experiencing problems when returning from the hibernate mode. I find that when the battery is almost empty and I go into hibernate (close the laptop lid)...when i try to reload (re open lid) it freezes at the Toshiba page where the blue progress bar just stops at around 75%. At this point I am forced to press the power button for a few seconds to shut down. When the battery is fully charged or plugged in, I don't get this problem.

 

Hi I Just bought this laptop.. its great..


question tho, am I able to use this on my lap? theres a fan underneath!