M50/M55 opinions/reviews?

I was wondering if any M50/M55 users here could give some quick thoughts and opinions of their notebooks?
I've heard some say it has mediocre build quality, especially around the keyboard area but haven't found any of that in the ones I've tried out recently at Costco and CompUSA, they were built quite well I must say and their screens were very nice, best I've seen outside of Fujitsu and Sonys.

 

You might try looking in the NotebookReviews section in the site. Toshiba's weak point in their notebooks seems to be their keyboards - they have excessive flex. Other than that, they're usually O.K. with the exception of some of the lower end models. Overall the M50/M55 seems to have better than average build quality.

 

Cool, cool.
Any other owners have anything to say???

 

I just bought m50-mx5 about two weeks ago.
I'm quite concerned with the heat and fan.
I installed NHC, and the HD temperature reading reaches 49 C just in one and a half hour used. I don't know if that's normal for a notebook. my old compaq with celeron compaq used to go up as high as 52 C, but that's after almost 3 years of use.

the other thing is the fan run pretty frequently i.e. once every one or two minutes. In my opinion it's not as quiet as what I read in amazon review or some other forums. I don't think it's a defect tho, as my friend bought the exact same model and hers also showed the same thing.

Rahul, how is your m55 when it comes to heat and fan? Have you ever measured the HD temperature? any advice how to slow the fan speed down when it's not needed, cause sometimes it also run when the temperature is only around 43-46??

 

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M50/M55, Umm....
- Super Short batt life
- run very hot
- noise fan
- Bad Build Quality
- Very thick as a 14"
- Quite Heavy as a 14"
- Toshiba paint job is very easy to fade out (palm Area)
- Fail rate higher than other even cheaper brand
- bad customer services when DOA
- forget toshiba, return after 3 Days

 

I have an M50, apart from pathitic performance, I can't complaine about any thing else.

It's not hot, it's not noisy, it's durable enough, I can't notice and keybord flex, or at least not enough to worry about.

It only gets 1.5 - 2 hours battery life, but I only have a 4 Cell battery, so thats why.

Ummm, yeah, we have 5 notebooks, and my M50 is the second best only to our IBM think book. But it was $1000 more, so I can't complain there.

Oh the screen is really nice too, and the speakers aren't bad either.

 

My friend has Satellite M55, and yes the keyboard does have a flex but not too much, glossy screen is awesome for me, but light leakage is very annoying especially for black background.
And build quality isnt terrible, compaq presario V/M2000 series is worse imo.

 

Strange, I thought they only made 6 and 12 cell batteries and 6 were the standard, maybe they put the 4 cells on the Celerons?
Yeah, the celeron is also why you get poor battery life, I've heard several people with Compaq V2000s and HP DV1000s with Celerons get 2-2.5 hours of battery life with 6 cell batteries so your battery life time is to be expected.

I haven't installed any software to measure the temperature.
Unfortunately, my fans do run constantly, not too loud but it is annoying but most of the time I don't hear them due to backround noise or the speakers on my computers or headphones.
Maybe if I download CHC (Centrino Hardware Control), I can maybe undervolt or something and lessen the fan noise.
Two weeks ago after a long time of use, my palmrests would get noticably warm but now the issue is gone and my computer runs quite cool after hours of use, strange.

Thick and heavy for a 14" notebook, really? I'd say its just about the same as some other competitors like the HP DV1000. So far, no paint has worn off in my palm rest, only the stickers on em show some wear though.
Haven't had experience with their tech support and I hope I don't. Thankfully I bought it from Costco and have 6 months to return it if I have any issues with it. No problems with build quality, quite well built for the price I'd say, sorry to see you had a lot of trouble with yours.
I have heard several users complain of its low build quality but these were from Summer 2005 and so maybe the newer models, like mine, have addressed the build quality issues....

If anyone cares, my model is M55-S3294

 

I wouldn't say the M55/M50 has horrible build or is really heavy - it's about on par with all of the other notebooks that were available on the market at the time (Toshiba recently replaced the M50/M55 with the M100 series). In addition, the battery life should be decent (3-3.5 hours with the standard battery), which again, was about on par with the rest of the notebooks available at the time.

 

Yes, I also beleive its on par with most of its competitors at its similar price range. I do wish it could have had the option for a remote like on the HP DV1000 and its QuickPlay feature could also read mp3 files on the hard drive instead of just media on the optical drive.

 

:::

3 hrs on spec, 2 hrs for real.....

:::

 

I always get 2:45 to 3:15 when running on battery.
my setting is level 3 brightness (one step down from half way), WIFI on, and i usually use msn, firefox, listening to music (w or w/o earphone) and ms office (word, excel and ppt). I set it to max battery.

 

:::

What't the spec of your lappy, moko?

:::

 

my laptop comes with Intel PM 750, 100 gb 5400 and 512 ram

 

I just bought an M50-MX5 (PSM50C-MX500E) from futureshop.ca.
I like it overall but the fan keeps speeding up and slowing down anytime I use an application. For example, if I scroll IE or open control panel.. etc.
Is this normal? The noise is not very loud but more annoying than anything, as if the fan were turning on and off.
5 seconds silence, scroll IE, 10 seconds of fan spin and then stops and scroll again and repeat.. the same thing happens when using pretty much any other application.
Please note I am using the notebook at home and hooked up to AC power, I did not notice this before when I was using it off AC power. Possibly the battery is heating up the laptop causing the fan to turn on and off? I will let it cool down for a few hours and see if the problem persists.

I've only used it for a few hours or so and I am not very impressed with how much heat it produces and the annoying fan.

 

You could use the power management to adjust the cooling method, I once set my m100 to the battery optimized fan setting while browsing the web and the fan never turned on.

 

I get about 2 and a half - 3 hrs on my M50. Ive never used all of it, but thats what the reading says. I mostly use it for school purposes (lectures and researching). I've had it since end of Aug 2005. What is every1's specs on battery life and Power Saver and NHC?

 

I had asked this question before, but I don't think I got a definitive answer.
Are there any forums dedicated specifically to the Satellite M50/M55 series?
There are forums dedicated to certain HP models such as www.dv1000forums.com and www.zd7000forums.com and www.r3000forums.com

Why is there not a www.m50forums.com?

 

I've had my M55 since March and am fairly satisfied with it. I got it for cheap from Best Buy as it was replacing an previous unit they could not repair. I only had to re-purchase the extended warr. It was either this or the Compaq / HP equivilents that were avalible. The Toshiba was cooler to the touch and besides I had owned Toshibas before and they were pretty reliable. After using it for 5 min I remembered the thing I hate most about Toshibas, the placement of the Windows key and the Del key. Otherwise I am happy with it, given it's competition at the time.

 

I've had my M-55 since January and I am still madly in love with it!!!

 

Ive had my M50 which in the US is called the M55 almost a year now.
I love the machine except for one thing. Ive heard quite a few people complasin about this including me but I dont know if you guys are experiencing this. Its the heat that is produced on the right side of the touch pad. The hard drive is the culprit of this. It gets preety hot. Are you guys experiencing this with the recent M55's? Other than that, it has been great

 

A small tip to all of you who think ur lappy is getting too warm, buy a rubber matt. It should be at least 2mm but not more than 4mm(milimeter), then cut out small pieces of rubber that will fit the feets of the laptop and glue this on with contact glue, not super/10 sec. glue.

Now that your laptop is lifted a bit higher from the table than it were from factory it will get cooler.

For using on your lap, get at piece of board and cut it so it sticks out 4-5cm on each side of the laptop and use that under when you want to use the laptop on ur lap. For the reason of stabillity and cooling, and the fact that the heat from the laptop will lower your sp... count(I'm not joking - just google it).

Now go and get this small programme and see if your temp didn't drop down to around 56 degrees celsius. Mine dropped from a constant of 64 to a constant of 56 -57 rising to 62 when using the laptop for other than normal use.

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

Good luck

Jan

 

ahem...