I ordered my Satellite M40-JM3

I'm waiting for it to arrive and I'll write something about it for sure when it arrives.

There are two things that are worrying me though: dead pixels and keyboard quality. Both are really important to me and I hope I'll be lucky.

Any of you that already has one, what do you have to say about the keyboard? Does it flex, a lot, a little, none? Are there some keys that respond differently so than others without reason. That's the reason I returned a previous laptop.

Thanks

 

I got the Toshiba M45 in the US, same as the M40 there in Canada. The screen is actually gorgeous, I had no dead pixels. The keyboard is okay, there's not a lot of flex but I don't like the fact Toshiba keyboards have a delete key that's undersized and no CTRL key on the right side -- only the left. The TAB key is also half the size of normal keyboards. Just odd.

DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com

 

With regards to your concerns "heaveny38" about the Toshiba M40:

Pixels: all good
Keyboard Flex: seems good to me. How do you define flex?
Keyboard Keys: they all respond well

If you have other concerns/questions, just ask.

 

In that case every key seems solid and without flex.

 

Thanks for the reply!

Well, by flex I can give you this comparison, which is not that much exagerated, as I saw some notebooks feeling this way. By flexing I mean, if you press one key, it feels like if you're pressing in a pillow and all the other keys around get deeper too.

The thing I also noticed on some keyboards is like for example the ESC key, which is on the extreme left top corner, can be less responsive than other keys, i.e. if you don't press it harder than other keys, or in its center, it doesn't work. That happened with the Compaq V2140 I tried.

Those are my concerns regarding the keyboard. About the non-standard keys, I can do with that!

I really can't wait for it to arrive, it should be somewhere at the beginning of next week.

 

Cool then Thanks

 

Well now I have a question for anyone with the new M40: Has anyone else noticed that the express card slot is not actually installed as promised in the specs on Toshiba's site? Mine has a solid plastic filler in its place. I'm wondering if they just neglected to put it in my particular unit or if this was a misprint on their site. I called Toshiba about it and they seemed to think if I take it into a repair centre it should get sorted out but then again the guy on the other end of the phone seemed to know less about the model than I do so I have my doubts. Anyone else find the same thing?

 

You'd better contact another Toshiba rep and insist on clarification. Some of them know nothing. The first guy I talked to had no clue about M40 and I had to show him where to find info about. Let me know what was the result. I think of exchanging my compaq for toshiba M40 this weekend, mainly because of the video card and then we can share the experiences.
Reedikulous - have you notice the CPU frequency changing depending on the M40 CPU workload?

 

Hi all. I received it yesterday and got around testing it a little.

Lucky as I am, almost the first thing that greeted me with that laptop was a dreaded BSOD with a stupid STOP error. It didn't occur again, but it wasn't really welcome. Anyway, the rest of the experience was mostly pleasing.

I haven't had time to test gaming, but I know it's a capable performer with its 6600. Fan noise is really minimal and I like it, it's lower than with the Compaq V2140 I tried before. The heat coming out of its left vent though is quite high, but the laptop itself doesn't seem to get too hot.

About the PC EXpress slot, it's the same for me, there's a dummy plastic thing that's stuck in there. Unless there's some way to remove it, it's a dummy! As for the CPU speed throttling, I haven't checked out this laptop yet, but with the Compaq, which was also a Pentium M, yes, the speeds change according to processor load. However, the switch is so fast it doesn't affect performance, from what I noticed.

As for what I was implying with the keyboard, it has a little of what I would've preferred not to be there, but generally it feels good. Alt key placement is very weird though. And the missing key before the "1" is also too weird.

Ah, yes, and if it's important to anyone, I know because it deceived me a little, the LCD matrix is 18bits, not 24. There's some hardware dithering at work. However, screen clarity is top notch, and I don't have dead pixels.

Any other question?

 

My fan is not running at all right now! When i do heavy workloads or graphically intense games, it is barely warm.... and I have it at 300/600! I double checked with Lavalys Everest and the CPU temp is only 32C. My hands are freezing and it doesnt serve as a hand warmer [ ]

What is this PCI Express slot you ppl speak of? Is it an extra slot, because the PCI-E 16x slot is already used up by the video card. Does this slot let you connect an extra video card or another peripheral?

 

Sky, you say "the PCI-E 16x slot is already used up by the video card" Can you explain more? How do you know?

 

Oh never mind, I checked Toshiba's website and indeed it says in the Expansion part there is an express card slot. But there is only one slot showing in Everest. Kind of misleading on that website, it says "1 express card slot", and there IS one slot....... just one [ )]

 

I used Lavalys Everest to check temperatures and benchmarks, hardware etc...... i looked at my mobo and it says the PCI-E 16x slot has the Geforce 6600 Go. I am kinda new to this PCI-E but I am thinking its just a port like PCI and AGP, and the motherboard only has one, and its used up by the GPU.

 

Thanks for the info. Toshiba is so vague about M40 laptop. It is so new that the Tosiba tech support doesn't know much about M40. I have contacted the Toshiba tech support and I will be dealing now with level 3 tech support. Nobody at Tosiba could answer my questions about the M40's GPU. Level 1 and 2 tech support could not help me. It is possible that Pc express card slot is taken by GPU in M40, as you say. I will try to contact Toshiba to confirm that. What sad is the fact that I am learning more on this forum about Toshiba laptops then I can from Toshiba itself. They have the market and only few of us want more then 99% of potential buyers so we are out of luck in getting the info we need from Toshiba. They can say, well, you don't have to buy our laptop and they are right. Unortunately, other manufacturers are the same so this forum is our only option to learn. Any other comments about his laptop will be appreciated. Thanks

 

Yes, I already knew Toshiba has very poor support when I bought this, but the beautiful screen and nice GPU attracted me (and i ddint want to wait until April or summer). I am very lucky to have gotten a solid system, no problems so far. Will keep the forum updated when i discover something new.

Interesting note, i heard from my contact in China that Sony has one of the best support, if you pay a little bit more (about US$50) you can buy a better 1 year IN PERSON warranty, if anything goes wrong just call the Sony hotline and they send a service technician to your house asap. Pretty good for the technically challeneged!

 

Ahh thanks for explaining that Fer. I was reading the Intel website on their new Sonoma chipsets and discovered the two Express card slots supported. I'll check the chipset again and see if there are any slots listed.

 

Sorry if misunderstood, but I think you are confusing the slot for the video card (known as PCIe, "replacing" AGP) with an also new expansion port just supported by the newer machines. It is called ExpressCard and it is supposed to replace (but who knows! [} ]) the PCMCIA (CardBus) cards that we used to use in the old times to add modem, net connection or more memory. Confusion comes because both work with the PCI Express interface (a "language", let's say, like USB)

You can find out more at http://www.expresscard.org/about.htm & http://www.expresscard.org/qa.htm

Anyway, it does not seem fair to me that the "publicized brand new port" is blocked/unusable in your brand new expensive machines [ !] [ ]!!! You may not care now (that the Express cards do not even exist) but you may want/need some expansion in the future and be stopped by a stupid piece of plastic or, worst, by a "nothing connection" inside (when sold as having it)!!!

[Sorry for disturbing you if you don't want to; consider it an attempt at helping you with some extra-strenght if you decide to fight for it [ ]]

 

Hey all,

Congrats on anyone who has purchased the M40, it is truly a state of the art machine.

I am a Toshiba Rep from Australia who works for a large retailer, and unlike most I have first hand information on the M40.

PCI express and the express card slot is a huge improvement for notebooks, allowing for a huge performance boost, and several expansion options. I was lucky enough to have attended a presentation with Toshiba's highly reputable Product Manager.

He hinted that the express card slot will be used in the future for such things as boosting the GPU's memory from 128 to 256, or adding another gig of RAM. There was also talk of using the express card slot for an second graphics card, SLI anyone???

Now, another reason to admire Toshiba is for what I am about to say. As I sat in the presentation room, I saw the M40 playing 'finding nemo' off a wireless TV tuner box, which was connected to a dvd player. It was playing nemo flawlessly as though the dvd was playing from the M40 itself, truly amazing.

Keep posting you reviews on the M40 as I am deciding whether or not to buy an M40 over a desktop for business & gaming.

Someone run a benchmark using a few of the latest games, Iv heard it clocks up around 14K on PCMark,

Look forward to seeing some figures.

Nelson

 

nrsimao,

The M40 seems to have the Express card Slot disabled (or just not there with a plastic non-removable cover over it). Do you have any info on this. Many of us have been seaking answers to this mystery slot and Toshiba Canada reps have no idea that it is not there.

Thanks "mate"

 

SLI [ ][ ] in my dreams.........

Yeah definitely get it for biz/gaming, especailly if you can get it for a good price! This is the kind of laptop that you can leave running for a month without heating or noise problems.

 

hey i was wondering if you guys have fixed the squealing noise when you unplug the power adapter like the other ppl. Also on another forum i heard this guy say that he could watch a dvd without even booting into windows, a quickplay feature maybe? if you guys could check that out for me that would be great, thanks guys

 

Yeah, about that quickplay feature, I know it was written somewhere, and there is a special partition reserved on the disk for this, AND a recovery disk for the feature, but for the life of me, I couldn't find how to activate it!!!

About the squeal, I also have it, someone said that it *may* be related to the CPU speed. Well, just try to mess around with the Power Saving features (i.e. lower the CPU speed in the AC setting and you'll get less or no noise) and you'll see it IS related to CPU speed, so I thought maybe a workaround for this is to set a range of speed instead of fixing the speed to the top, even when on A/C.

 

I got my M40 at Future Shop last weekend, and I am very impressed with the quality of this laptop. Although the construction is all plastic, it is a high quality plastic that is very well put together. I have not noticed any dead pixels on the beautiful screen, and the picture quality is excellent. I also haven't noticed any flex on the keyboard, and the keys have a nice feel to them when pressed. The keyboard is an adequate size, although the key arrangement is slightly odd, with no right side 'CTRL' key, and the 'Windows' key being in the top right of the keyboard.

Toshiba Satellite M40

Pentium-M 1.6 GHz | 512MB RAM | 128 MB nVidia Geforce GO 6600

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by The Chemist

 

"The M40 is not constructed from plastic, it is mostly made from Magnesium Alloy, making it light and strong."



No it's not. It's plastic, at least the one in canada is.

 

My apologies all, I was told from Toshiba that the chassis would be alloy like the M30, but in fact it is plastic.

Im work for a large retailer as a Toshiba Specialist and they should have stuck with the alloy.

For those of you that where unsure of the express card slot, our model of the M40 has two slots, one type 2 card slot and an express card slot. Both are covered by plastic flaps, but you easily slide either card.

The only other disappointment is not boosting the HDD to a faster drive, our M40 is still packing a 4200rpm drive.

 

nrsimao, hopefully you can help me with two things. Mine came without a manual, lol.

1.) On the right side is the DVD superdrive (or multidrive, whtevr), the front is the SmartMedia, where is the express slot located?

2.) If I want to add an extra 512mb of ram where do I add it. Thanks.

 

Sky,

here in Australian we have 2 models of the M40, one high-end and a low-end version. The only major differences being a 1GB of RAM instead of 512, and a 60GB HDD instead of 40GB

However on both of our models, on the left hand side towards the bottom corner, we have a type II pc card slot, and above it is an express card slot.

If your M40 only has 512MB RAM then you should be able to install another 512MB in the free memory slot located underneath the machine.
There a plastic cover you must unscrew in order to see the slot.

If you have an M40 with a 1GB already and you want to add another 512MB, then this becomes costly, because you would need to replace the 512MB stick in the bottom with a 1GB.

Good Luck

nrsimao

 

Thanks for the reply. Yep, i know there are two versions, the one I have is the M40-JM3 or as you say the low end one (730 processor). Grrr.. the "high-end" one came out 2 weeks after [ !]

Anyways, two more questions [ ] 1.) if i put an extra 512mb stick in there, would the two RAM work in dual channel mode? and 2.) do you have any idea if the M40 Sonoma chipset can take DDR2 ram? Some people told me the chipset can support it, but the manufacturers (in this case Toshiba) design the laptop so that i can only take DDR.

Thanks again [|)]

 

The M40 does support dual channel memory, and by placing another 512, you will be activating the dual mode.

Yes the new sonoma chipset does support DDR2, the only problem however is that in order to activate the dual channel mode you need two identical memory modules. All models of the M40's are using 512MB DDR 333Mhz memory modules, kingston memory over here.

Even though the Intel's sonoma chipset supports DDR2, there needs
to be a DDR2 memory slot on the motherboard in order to fit DDR2 memory modules. Iv read that, "if a producer installs DDR memory, then upgrading to DDR2 is not possible for mechanical reasons alone. Likewise, if the system is designed only for single-channel DDR2 operation, then an upgrade to dual-channel operation is not possible".

Follow this link for an interesting article on Sonoma:

http://www20.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050119/sonoma_alviso-04.html

 

Ok so I have an option to pick up a stick of 512ddr 333mhz 2.5cl (latency), but the brand is not Kingston, there's HY and Samsung and all that, is that ok for dual channel? Thanks again.

 

Sky, you should order a 512 ddr stick from Toshiba over there, just to make sure you get an identical 2nd stick.

This will gurantee that the BIOS in both modules will be identical, and thus enabling the dual channel mode.

 

Ok i have installed a stick of Kingston 512mb 333mhz ram I got through an authorized Kingston dealer (could not get one through Toshiba, they are on shortage), everything works great, it shows i now have 1024mb, BUT..... using Lavalys Everest it says Dual Channel supported but active is Single Channel (64-bit). Any ideas? Its on the second slot btw, so two sticks on first and second slot, identical specs shown on Everest.

How do I enter the BIOS on the M40.. i tried holding F1 or F12 during bootup, it just slows down until I let go, then resumes loading XP.

And is there a setting in the BIOS that activates Dual Channeling? THanks.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Sky

 

Well, if you look closer to the tom's hardware site. It does mention that 915PM (used on M40) chipset does support dual-channel. However, it has to be used with "DDR2" ram. With my understanding, the M40 comes with only DDR333 ram (NOT DDR2 ram). As a result, even if you add the other DDR333 ram, the system won't run in dual-channel mode. You have to buy two DDR2 ram in order to use the dual-channel mode. Well, I really hope that I am wrong since I may get a M40 soon. Anyway, does anyone confirm the M40 can run in dual-channel mode with only DDR333 ram installed?!

 

Does anyone know this new Toshiba M40 support dual channel? or DDR2? As far as I know, Sonoma data trasfer is at 5.4 Gb/s. If the motherboard support dual channel, 2 bands of DDR333 will match the CPU speed (2.7 Gb/s x2), or use 1 band of DDR2 at 5.4 Gb/s will do. If this Toshiba MB does not support either of them, it is better to buy the DDR400 (3.4 Gb/s) to replace the installed DDR333 to get better performance.

My machine come with hynix 512mb SODDR. It is not Kingston. It is hard to find a match band of hynix ram. Considering to buy 2 bands of DDR400 to upgrade the laptop.