Looking to buy a P100-SD8

I think i've finally made my notebook decision, the Satellite P100-SD8...

Reasons:
-17" Widescreen
-2.0ghz core duo
-2gig 667mhz dual channel memory
-GeForce 7900GS
-120gig 5400rpm hdd

Is there anything I should know about this laptop that I should be weary of? It seems to have recieved fairly good reviews (the few out there), and I've tested one of the display models at one of the big box stores in town (oh ya HL2 native res, everything maxed with aa/af...) I was very impressed.

I've seen pictures of the american version (I am canadian), and it has lights coming from the speakers, and a biometric scanner. I know the canadian ones do not come with the scanner, but do they come with the little lights in the speaker grills?

Also, how much dedicated video memory does this model have? I've seen some with a 7900GS with 512mb and some with 256mb, but I've also read that the 512mb versions do not show their memory size correctly, looking like a 256mb version. Does the P100-SD8 have 512mb or 256mb?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I will hopefully will be the proud new owner of one of these fine notebooks fairly shortly!

 

I just received my p100-222, I got it delivered to my office. Can't wait to get home and test it out. I hesitated a lot before buying it because of it's size. Now that I carried it and tried it's weight on for size. Let me just say, I'm never gonna leave this baby home. It's not that light, but lighter than I expected. I'll let you know how it turns out by tommorow.

 

its 256 mb

 

Alright thank you for clearifying that for me etownsfinest.

Ya, I believe it is one of the smallest and lightest 17" laptops around. Felt pretty light in the store. I had an HP zd7000 series notebook last summer and that beast weighed 9lbs+... great notebook, although it had some problems running photoshop (some sort of hardware conflict..) but anyways. I hope to be picking one of these toshiba's up shortly and I will post up a bunch of clear pictures for everybody and my thoughts on the unit.

 

future shop has them on sale now for 2099cad good luck

 

Ya I know futureshop has it on sale... wish i could be buying it sooner, but what can you do? It may be a week or two before I can go out and pick up the laptop so I guess I'll just have to cough up the extra $200, or maybe I might talk to the manager and see if I can get the sale price.

 

I'd be very interested in seeing a rivatuner log of especially the VGA bios header, so if someone would like to give that a shot?

 

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS XG MobileForce Enhanced
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0298
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : b2000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : c0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : b1000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 00002000 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter PCI configuration space
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff +00+01+02+03+04+05+06+07+08+09+0a+0b+0c+0d+0e+0f
$0300000000 +00 de 10 98 02 07 00 10 00 a1 00 00 03 00 00 00 00
$0300000001 +10 00 00 00 b2 0c 00 00 c0 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 b1
$0300000002 +20 00 00 00 00 01 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 79 11 31 ff
$0300000003 +30 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 01 00 00
$0300000004 +40 79 11 31 ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$0300000005 +50 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ce d6 23 00 00 00 00 00
$0300000006 +60 01 68 02 00 00 00 00 00 05 78 80 00 00 00 00 00
$0300000007 +70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 01 00 00 05 2c 01
$0300000008 +80 10 28 0b 00 01 4d 01 00 0b 00 01 01 00 00 00 00
$0300000009 +90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$030000000a +a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$030000000b +b0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$030000000c +c0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$030000000d +d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$030000000e +e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$030000000f +f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Cannot dump NVIDIA VGA BIOS information

 

Me love you long time!

Not the result I was hoping for, tho

 

Not sure how much value my comment will be to anyone here but thought I should add my two bits on my initial P100-SD8 experience. Two days ago I picked up a new P100-SD8 from Compusmart that they brought in for me from Vancouver. I managed to get them to drop their price to the FutureShop sale last week which was decent.

Unfortunately I can't say very much positive about the machine as it didn't survive the XP update procedure. The first hour went something like this:

Took it out of the box. Powered on / booted up and entered the usual 'first boot' parameters (time zone settings, admin account etc). Next I entered my wireless network parameters, no problem. The trouble starts after I attempted to do the XP updates.

About 30s into the initial update downloading (not even the installation) the machine locks up and gives me the "physical memory dump complete" blue screen. I reboot and attempt to update again with the same result. I reboot again and try to register the unit with Toshiba and the OS with MS, same blue screen. Reboot again and try to register again - success this time. Try and do the updates again, this time I get further (finished installing 35 out of 43 updates) but instead of the blue screen I get a lock up and about 2min later, an abrupt total power off with what I assume was an attempted restart (the power indicator was on and the fan was running). However instead of booting up I just get the fan running at medium speed. No Toshiba / bios splash, no flicker of the screen, no hard disk activity, just the fan. After several power offs/ons of only fan activity I fear the worst has transpired and pack the thing up again (I hadn't even removed the protective plastic). I'm not sure if others have ever had a similar experience or not, but not even being able to access the bios on a fresh-out-of-the-box machine was a pretty impressive feat for me.

I explained what happened to the techs at Compusmart and requested a new machine considering I hadn't even had this one running for more than an hour. No problem there except that they have to bring another one in from Vancouver (3-5 business days). Needless to say I'm pretty disappointed that this unit slipped through quality control and frustrated that I have to wait another 3-5 days because of it (going on a conference next week). However, I am grateful that my request for a new unit was not met with hassle or attitude. I just hope that the new unit lasts a _little_ longer than 1 hr.

I'll keep you posted on how the new unit turns out (if people are interested) or I'd be willing to provide results of specific tests or additional info (upon request) once I get it.

 

You know what, the EXACT same thing happened to my Gateway MX1023 I bought a week ago (just exchanged it for the HP dv6000z). Couldn't this be a virus by any chance? It's too much to be a coincidence.

 

Hi cy007,

That is very strange. I'm by no means a virus expert but I'd guess that this is just bad hardware / quality control issue on Toshiba's (and Gateway's) part. It would have to be a pretty impressive virus since I didn't download or run anything other than the MS updates and Toshiba registration software. My router does not broadcast the SSID, I use WEP encryption and MAC filtering so I'd like to think things are secure that way. Plus there are two other machines on my home network that have been running virus free for a few years now (if that is any indication). To get any virus, especially one that completely takes out the hardware, in such a short period of time is very impressive. That being said, I suppose nothing is impossible. If in fact lappys are so vulnerable during the security updates, I would think that Toshiba should provide a more current installation of XP at the factory (or at least provide patches to the dealer/user to install before going online). In a utopian world I suppose.

Anyway, I've since spoken with another Toshiba owner (Sat. A60) who is now replacing her MB for the 3rd time within 7months (twice within 30 days!). So it seems to me that total hardware failure shouldn't necessarily be all that surprising these days.

Best of luck with the HP and thanks for sharing your story. Hopefully I'll be picking up the new unit today (but probably tomorrow ).

 

ooo that sucks, mines been pretty positive. Only bad thing happened is when i left it on for 2-3 days straight and tried to restart it with a bunch of programs, i think it froze or something, i didn't really want to wait so i just clicked the power button.

It is a sweet laptop, i havent tested the battery but its probably not too impressive. But i love the screen its so nice.

 

My review is now ready, check it out in my signature. The only difference with your machine is 2gig ram vs. 1gig ram. It's a great laptop.