Model 305D-S6848 Saw today, but question

I just saw this today at Best Buy. On sale til tommorrow. I liked it really well, but a couple big questions.

The sound on the Harmon Cardon built in speakers was so dreadfully low volume when I watched a few minutes of a movie on it I could barely heard a word. Sales guy said if I dowloaded the latest drivers the sound volume would be fine. The guy said it was a computer they just go it in. Is that true??? Drivers make sound go from a whisper to a roar in volume? What do you think? For those who have this model, or have seen it, what do you think?

The other big question is that it was slow -- I mean the movie actually almost paused. Sales guy said it was because Norton was running. I run Avanquest, but just wondered about it. Could Norton slow the system so much, or is this device just not good for multimedia use??

 

The sound on my P305D are awesome. It has a wheel that you use to turn up the volume on the lappie and we could not hear very well in the circuit city store this afternoon. When I got it home, it was simply wonderful. I am really impressed with this laptop. Simply amazing for $799.

cheers
Hawkeen

 

I mentioned that to the OP with the other thread he started.

 

I may go back and try to adjust the sound volume knobs on the Toshiba at Best Buy.

 

Hey ! I just bought the 305D from TOSHIBA and it is really excellent.
One thing though : the battery life is...ONE HOUR long.
at least that's what i'm seeing right now. first charge yesterday night (8hours) and now it says there's only 1 hour battery life !

why ??? plus, it's a lithium-ion battery. not supposed to do all these things you had to do with others. just one night charge and should be fine !
what do i do ?

thx

 

First charge of the battery will not yield its full capability.
Charge/Dischage it a couple of times and it should have more battery life.
My A300 gets about 2 hours on balanced.
See Sig for Spec
Harman/Kardon speakers are just about the best you can get in laptops.

 

I've been looking at budget 17" desktop replacements including the Satellite P305D. My main concern is the overall performance of the the 2.0GHz RM-70 processor combined with the ATI Radeon Mobility 3100 graphics. The ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3200 is simply amazing for an IGP, but I've not found any benchmark scores or performance data (or even specs) for the 3100. I know it's a "de-contented" version of the 3200 that doesn't support HD video. The 3100 also runs at a slower speed (300MHz vs. 500MHz) according to a posting elsewhere on this site....

Comments? Any performance related issues to mention?

BTW- old school or not, I prefer the thumb-wheel volume control over the newer types of soft-touch buttons, etc.....a plus in my book!

 

For what it's worth, I went to a different store and tried this same model again. Fantastic sound quality. I guess it was just that one display model which had been messed up somehow.

 

My experience is the battery life on ours in not great. But one hour seems really short. I would say we may get around 1:45. Try setting the power mode to power saver or balanced (right click on battery icon in Vista).

If you don't get much better than an hour, perhaps your battery is defective. Particularly if you really aren't stressing the power consumption with a lot of heavy duty tasks.