Any other G35 av-660 owners out there?

Looking for some feedback from other owners. This is my first Toshiba notebook. I am pleased so far.

 

i have the av600, plan to do a mb swap so i mable to have the better graphics card, Im very please with the qosmio, the only thing is i like to clean it once in a while since it gets all smuged on the metal

 

what do you use to clean your screen? Do you overclock your videocard now? I just downloaded the update for the Toshiba player. It fixed some extra featues on the King Kong disc.

 

I have the G35-AV650 which I have had since release last June or July. Most of my initially positive impressions of it have deteriorated over the course of about eight months of heavy use. The Qosmio continues to be very fast with one of the best screens available on any portable. However some of the things I've had to deal with:

- hardware issues - I've had a couple of fan failures
- screen hinge has started to come loose - it's just not up to the task of holding up the heavy high quality screen that these laptops handle
- HD-DVD on the AV650 using "WinDVD HD" (or "WinDVD for Toshiba") is problematic with many discs (I have about 20) and the software itself is barebones. I also am wondering about Toshiba's long-term commitment to it since they basically dumped it for their own in-house player in the AV660 just a few months after the AV650 was launched
- Vista support is terrible... well... I still can't get Vista to run on this thing despite the 3.10 bios update and the posted RC1 RAID drivers.
- Chassis starts to vibrate when LFE is playing through the speakers at moderate volume. The laptop chassis is reasonably well built... but "reasonably well built" doesn't really cut it at this price point
- Too many open questions and uncertainty. Can I get Purevideo HD and if so, how? What decode acceleration is available? When can I use nvidia geforce go 7 drivers vs. Toshiba drivers vs. laptopvideo2go drivers and which ones might cause WinDVD-HD to break? and so forth.
- Tiny user community. Nobody owns these HD-DVD laptops. So when there's a problem, or when one of us is curious, there's really nobody to ask.

I could go on.

I'm mostly tolerating the thing now, and when it's working it certainly does impress young and old alike. It wasn't a good purchase decision for me, however, and in subjecting it to a fair amount of wear and tear I've learned that it really isn't built for heavy use.

 

I have an A650 with extra RAM added but the 650 and 660 might have the same pros and cons.

I have had mine since Dec. 06. Back then there wasn't many laptops with HD-DVD and that was my main reason for getting a laptop (always thought they were over priced and under powered). I did the research and settled on the Toshiba A650. I did allot of shopping around and was ready to buy it when I saw it on sale at CompUSA for 2000.00 (I think retail was 2500). I didn't want to impulse buy and still had Circuit City to check. Glad I did, I found it on sale as a display model. I guess if the high end ones don't sell they don't order more and sell the display (it had not been out all that long?). I got it at a steal for 1500.00. The battery was never even put in; it was in the back with all the rest of the accessories. Needless to say I was happy. Since then I have used it to play Battlefield 2, Command&Conquer Triburium, and Oblivion (all in high res and all settings about 2/3 up...very impressive). As far as HD-DVD I have only played 2 and they played great. Viewed mostly on the laptop screen but, on occasion, on my friends 60" Sony.
So now for the bad news. Last week while playing C&C Tribirium I got a very strange fade to white screen that started as a bunch of horizontal thick white lines and then got progressively whiter/greyer. It froze and when I rebooted it had a bunch of blue vertical dash lines on the startup splash screen. Since then I have had 50/50 chance starting normal and have even gotten some yellow dots on the screen. I always keep my drivers up to date but have been annoyed that Toshiba is not coming out with newer video drivers for XP. I have worked with it for hours upon hours and still have not got it resolved.
So now for the real bad news. I have had my Vista upgrade sitting around since the beginning of the year and have been scared to upgrade. I decided to try the restore but then remembered that I don’t have a “restore partition”. Seems like circuit city had to problems doing the restore and needed to get their demo software off. They completely wiped the partitions and then install Windows with all the right Toshiba stuff. I don’t know how they got it to this point. Unless it never had a “restore partition” and I’m missing install disk? Anyway, I now had no choice but to install Vista. I backed up all my files and went for it. Guess what you can’t do a full install with these disk. The paper instructions say so (even though I never believe them). But I can’t get it to boot with this “upgrade” disk. While in Windows I started the normal install process and after about 10 minutes of it checking my system, it said it could not continue until I removed the "Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba" and some other Toshiba driver (I forgot now what it was). The latter deinstalled like normal. The Bluetooth did not. When I try to uninstall it from the "Add/Remove programs" it bombs and tells me "Error 1327 invalid drive F:/". I have tried a few times and even tried finding it in the "OEM.inf" files to delete it manually but have not had any luck. So now I can't force the install to continue.
While in windows I did manage to explore and find the setup file. With that it does give you the option to install Vista while it moves your windows XP into a new folder where you can access it but not boot it. It tells you if you want a clean install to start up the machine with the install disk. This, of course, doesn’t work with the “upgrade” disk- maybe they are talking about some other disk? So I get through the first portion and then it self reboots but from that point on I get the blue screen of death every time I try to finish the install. I now have a brief menu that allows me to boot to the original windows or the install windows. I can choose install and hit F8 for more options but none work. Seems the only reason I have been able to get into my original Windows is that I had uninstalled the video drivers. Since then I have not had any problems. Of course now I can’t scroll through my windows without it chopping up not to mention that gaming is out of the question!
So I guess I have to throw in the towel and take it in to have CC fix it. Maybe I can force them to get my partition back. Well I don’t know if it’s just a glitch in the file system (I did do ChkDsk a few times and it found no errors) or maybe I fried the video card. Oh, the new menu to chose different window installs also had an extensive memory checker (took quite a while). I had recently upgraded the pathetic 1gig ram (that is shared with the video card- my only complaint when I bought it) to 4 gigs and was thinking that maybe it was the ram. I don’t know how good this test is but I’m thinking the RAM is OK. Wish me luck
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