Does anyone own the Satellite P300 notebook

I am looking at purchasing this for my husband, the specs are as follows:

Intel P7350 2.0ghz cpu core 2 duo
4gb ram
320 gb harddrive
512mb ATI + HDMI video card
17" screen
vista home premium 64bit

cost is $900.00 canadian

He uses his computer for emails, surfing the net and the occasional game. Do you think that this is a good notebook for the price?

 

I just bought this notebook earlier this week - you must be thinking of the Staples special. My advice - get it. It is a great price for the unit, on sale until next tuesday but likely to sell out before then.

I would mention only that to make certain that a 17" laptop is what he needs. It is large, but not overly so. It is best for those who travel between places and need a computer to be easily seat up in either. It is not a good choice as a "laptop" due to it's size, although you certainly can do so if you like. IT is not overly heavy, slightly lighter than my previous toshiba 17" unit.

But if the choice is between the 15.4 or 17", there is honestly little difference in terms of weight and portability, so don't let that throw you off.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the reply I did buy it for him as I didnt want to wait because of the good price, he will take it with him this week as he works out of town for 2 weeks and then home again. Do you like yours?

 

I like it very much. The sounds is excellent, speakers are exceptional for a notebook, I listen to a lot of music while working. The processor is powerful and the video card good for a notebook in this range. I am disappointed with the quality of the LCD, I find it to be rather washed out looking in comparison to my previous toshiba M60. However it seems that this is common amongst all notebook manufacturers these days - probably why they can sell them for these prices! My M60 4 years ago cost $2300 new. Now the equivalent P300 costs half that.

 

Thanks for the mini review. My husband like it, probably overkill for what he uses it for but the price was good and he wanted the 17" screen as this is a desktop replacement for him.

 

Glad to hear it. Many people feel the 17" notebook is too large, but really it is only about 1-2 pounds heavier than the 15.4" notebook, and provides you with a much larger screen that is easier to work with (especially for spreadsheets, which I use a lot) and often a full sized keyboard including the num-pad. If you don't literally need a laptop, and you're not carrying it on your shoulder all the time, then it is perfect for many people's needs.

One other thing I was not fond of is the amount of "bloatware" software that comes with the notebook. Toshiba bundles numerous programs that are generally useless because they replace existing ones built into windows, and are no better. I removed much of it, but it probably won't affect most people much other than slowing down loading times. I like my OS to be as clean as possible.

 

I will have to remove all the bloatware as well but I am not sure if I will have time before he has to leave for work. I haven't used it too much but I think that the Norton they put on is slowing the system down so I will have to remove that and put on something else.

 

First thing I got rid of was Norton, it is an overbloated lousy piece of software that takes over yuor computer worse than Vista. I am trying out Avira Antivir free antivirus, rated well, so far so good. I've used AVG in the past, also good.

Recommend dumping the office trial package as well, and a handful of toshiba programs. If I have time I will make a list of the programs to disable in the startup menu through msconfig. Even after this though it still feels bloated, but I think that has more to do with Vista than anything.

 

I will probably use NOD 32 or Avast for antivirus I have used both, they both seem really good but I find that Nod32 doesn't use alot of resources, but Avast is free. I will get rid of all the trial stuff before he uses it otherwise he may like them and then I will have to buy it. You would think that with 4gb ram, 320gb hdd, 512mb video card that Vista would run alot smoother and wouldn't be so slow, I will have to go through his system to get rid of anything that he doesn't need. Do you use open office?

 

I haven't used it yet, but thinking about it. Still have Office XP from years ago, it has served me well.

I am a bit surprised how sluggish Vista is too, even after dumping so much junk. Methinks I still have some weeding to do. I find the media player runs lousy - when playing an AVI if I go full screen the video track stops for a minute while the audio keeps going, same if I try skipping ahead. It doesn't do this with Media player classic. The Win DVD program takes care of DVDs fine enough. The built in media buttons at the top are really cool.

 

I like the media buttons as well. I haven't played with it too much other than to make a copy of the recovery cd's. I also have office xp but I have that on my computer so I was going to put open office on my husbands so hopefully he won't have any issues with it. I found that the sound wasn't that loud when I played a movie so I will have to check on that to make sure I have all the settings correct, you said your sound was really good? Was this just with music or did you try playing a dvd?

 

I find the sounds varies a lot depending on the source. The DVD player wasn't too loud, but some movies are louder than others. Make sure the volume in Vista is set all the way up. You can do this either through the taskbar icon in the bottom right corner or using the little wheel next to the headphone jack in front. There are other way of increasing the volume too, but they are through using specific programs. IF you use media player classic, you can increase the volume through a software gain increaser, but it may cause increased static and or distortion, especially with bass. I will be looking into other options. The mainboard uses a Conexant based audio hardware, not familiar with it myself.

 

I did adjust the volume both with the volume wheel and through vista but this is a minor thing as the rest of the notebook is nice.