Official X500 Owner's Lounge!

LOL Kenneth, yeah. I did the same. Ingvarr, I can SEE lots of networks but connecting to mine the signal strength is lower than the card I had before. I'm not saying it doesn't work. Maybe it's more susceptible to other 2.4Ghz devices around it? not sure, not going to rip it apart and find out.

 

Guys ... thanks for the info on the wireless. I've got a situation where I can be working a bit far from my router sometimes between two floors. Given what I've read about the toshiba, I guess I'll hold off until they fix. Not sure why Toshiba chose to go with the cheaper wireless card in these notebooks.

 

GBL, If that's your only concern, I don't think I'd be concerned over it.

I have signal all over my house and haven't lost connection to my home router at all. The rest of the laptop outperforms! If you find you really had an issue, you can always get an external Expresscard Wifi adapter, but you most likely won't need it. Everyone has to have something to "whine" about, and the wifi is the only feature that is "sub par" in my opinion other than the flat keyboard and that it collects fingerprints like the FBI.

The other gentleman has 0 issues with wifi and feels its stronger. But other reviews have pointed out the same opinion that I have of it.

 

I am not sure what others compare their wireless connection with, but I just ran a test between my Sager 9262 and my X505-Q850, downloading a 163 MB file while connected to my wireless hub. The two laptops were side-by-side (in fact the Toshiba was a foot further away from the hub), and I started them at the same moment.

Here are the results:

Code:

X505                                9262
7min56sec                         8min24sec
351kb/sec                         322kb/sec

The "Connectivity Doctor" on the Q850 says that connection speed is 195 Mbps.

Concerning the noisy touch buttons on the left, obviously most people have found a utility to turn that off, and it can be done of course directly in the bios (F2 during startup)

 

I have found myself that it is better not in fact disable the annoying beeping from the start.
With beeping on in a week I've accustomed to not to press buttons accidentially - obviously much harder to notice when beeping is off.
When you are accustomed to it, then you can turn the beeping off.

 

Hey whats up, i just ordered a x505 from JR, for a sweet deal, 1,400 with tax and free shipping! Man gotta love J and R! The whole shebang, blu ray drive, 320 7200rpm, 1.6 core i7 etc.. yeah yeah so happy.

 

Hey guys also, i would like to know what company is the blu ray drive and can you put the 5100 or 5300 card in there? I read that wireless card really sucks.

 

You know this sucks that sometimes people answer what i write it is very annoying.

 

The BD drive in mine is Matas h i t a. At least it is in mine. Have you received it yet?

 

No i won't receive it until Monday or Tuesday but i won't have it yet until Tuesday or Wednesday, due to my i send all of my things i order online to his house cause i always have bad luck well sometimes with online items. Did you find a bag or sleeve for it? Man its hard to find one. Here is toshiba's site http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/accessories.jsp?N=25%20216%204294967171%204294967004%204294966233&Ntk=All&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchall&target=accessories.jsp&category=carrying+cases&Ns=fprice|1&Nty=1&lid=addRefinement_18.4_inch_and_under. Also here is a sleeve for it but i haven't tried a sleeve yet http://www.amazon.com/Tucano-BFXXL18-Neoprene-Notebook-Sleeve/dp/B0026B3VJS.

 

How is your machine going for you? Also how bright is the screen?

 

I see the word filter stripped out the name. corrected. lol. I don't need bag or sleeve. It doesn't "move" much.

My situation was that where I work from is limited space and needed laptop, otherwise I'd have gotten a massive desktop..

Screen brightness? Ahh, too bright. I had to dial it down quite a bit.

 

I use
Backpack http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001R788BS/ref=ox_ya_oh_product
Skin http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001Q7SSWI/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

Both are fitting perfectly and of very good quality overall.

Screen brightness is not the highest I've seen, but very good overall. Most importantly what I like, it's very uniform.

 

Ingvarr,

According to Toshiba, you and I have different screens.

Yours: Display Type*

HD+ TruBrite® TFT LCD display

Mine: Display Type*

FHD TruBrite® TFT LCD Display
Display Resolution*

1920x1200, Supports 1080p content

I'll agree, it's very uniform, I'll disagree on the brightness. I had to dial mine down.

Thanks for the links for the other goodies! Keep 'em coming!!!!

 

Now, someone answer this one:

The GTS 250M video set defaults from Nvidia is 500Mhz/1250Mhz. (Core/Shader clock)

Toshiba is defaulting to 400Mhz/1080Mhz.

I've run it all the way up to 525 before artifacting occurs, at 500, the temp actually hit 72c and the fans went into high speed.

485/1164 seems about perfect for clock sets on this mobile card without pushing the temps over 70c which would give you quite a temp buffer still.

Did they downclock them to meet their "eco green" initiative?

 

How much is the sleeve in American dollars? I bought a rosewill one with a pocket to put your charger in. Yes i like to take my machines out. Good i love bright screens, i hate low dimmed ones. When i was playing with the machine at the store i agree the button is too low to take out the disc. Did you buy any blu ray discs? Blu ray discs read faster with tray's instead of slot load. Sorry compusmurf for not saying your name? What do you think of the build quality? I know that you have the dual lamps. How is the quality, saturation. I also just got a regular 20 inch case logic bag and i hope it fits.

 

Yes i find that outrageous, how is it supposed to be labeled as a gaming machine if it is supposed to be running at like 550 MHZ, this global warming crap all lies and trying to introduce this into our machines sheesh. If your going to do overclock the card, then make sure you put acrtic cooling or silver thermal paste. Also i remember reading about how the computer keep overheating and wouldn't turn on and he said that it was the graphics card causing it. So down clocking it causes problems.

Also Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

 

More likely their cooling setup was just not designed to handle 500Mhz in all possible situations, like in hot summer, etc.
Yep, its possible that it will work for you now, but with possible long-term implication (or not for everybody) - so they dont want to guarantee it, that's why the downclocking.

Why do you care about number? I find all my modern games running just fine, didn't even felt the need to overclock yet.

Happy Thanksgiving, but you know, there is an edit button for you to add text to latest post

 

Could be the cooling. Could be they wanted the ECO 5 rating with the lower 120W power supply too. Cranking up the video is going to draw more juice. The watts of power used between 400 to 500 is quite a bit more.

At 485, I was watching the cooling VERY VERY closely and it's only 1-2deg C different than stock, tho it will consume more power. I'm absolutely NOT going to run it at 500 or 525 but nice to know it will.

485 seems like a decent range.

I was using FurMark burnin test and then used the speedtest.

went from stock 4065 to 4384 using my settings of 485, etc. Using the burn in testing, not 1 glitch and I pretty much saw where the temp maxed out.

Side note for you Ingvarr, the Toshiba UK site has a few newer drivers and such than the US site. BT drivers are newer, webcam drivers, etc. I bookmarked it and will use it to compare when I feel the need to update again.

 

Can any one comment more on the display quality of the 1920x1200 lcd? I can't find it locally to see for myself. The 18" HP and Acer have terrible lcds. I'm mostly interested in low black levels and good contrast. Even subjective comparison to other laptops would be helpful. Thanks a lot!

 

I care about the number cause my quadro fx 3700 is still the highest clock speed i have seen for a mobile card of today. Running at 745 MHZ!! I only be running one game on there, GTA IV because of its ultra powerful requirements of a cpu. What do you think of the core i7?

 

Umm, to me looks like you think that same Mhz always mean same performance, that is completely non true if you compare different chips and especially different generations of chips.

For example, this 1.6 GHz i7 totally rips 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Quad if you measure actual performance.

 

^^The bad part about that is most consumers now think that.

 

No Ingvarr i don't think that way much, it has a 128 cuda. I agree about that this is the future, the i7 is pure performance and damn it i want my machine already, i have wait until Tuesday or Wednesday. Why can't they deliver on weekends!

Another thing i hate the most about consumers is that when something so little breaks down people tend to buy another machine and spend so much money instead of replacing a hard drive, screen etc...

 

Ha anyone in the UK got one of the UK spec machines, if so can you post a quick review and your general opinions.

If not can some US owners post your opinions so far, whats the positives and negatives and is it worth the money ?

 

I ordered the X505-Q832 (Costco model) recently and received it in about a day. This replaced an HP Dv7 system purchased about 2 months ago - it was okay, but I wanted something faster. I was concerned about the Wifi performance of the X505 and initially had problems even when the laptop was right next to my router.

I downloaded an updated driver dated 11/20/2009 I think from Realtek and have had excellent performance with no issues since (it seems the driver is for the RTL8191SE and RTL8192SE - the download page has the RTL8192SE title):

http://www.realtek.com/downloads/do...n=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true

There was a Windows 7 update from Microsoft this week and I think that may have improved overall system performance as well

 

Ohhh, good snag on the Realtek drivers. It's definitely NEWER than the one Toshiba gives out.

For other folks, if you don't know, for updated video drivers, jump over to laptopvideo2go.com and grab the latest there for your OS. Don't forget to grab the modded INF file too. You'll need it. I'm using 195.62 release and seems pretty stable

Now find us sound drivers that won't drop out...... I rolled back the drivers from Toshiba back to Microsoft's version... Stable without the annoying sound drops.

 

Why don't you get the Harman Kardon drivers? How is the speakers anyway? I am still waiting on mine i hate these companies that won't ship on the weekends!

 

???

It's a conexant sound card and their drivers have issues. Mostly noticeable while playing games.

If you play games, you'll see soon enough.

 

If so then how do you fix them? I thought it was harman Kardon soundcard?

 

There is no such thing.
Toshibas use Harman Kardon speakers. As for soundcards they all use standard HD Audio codec chips.
Previous Toshibas used Realtek codecs, X505 uses Conexant Pebble. And Conexant own drivers are just buggy.
Good thing that all HD Audio codecs have a driver in the standard Vista/W7 - so you don't exactly need driver from manufacturer (as long as you don't need some "extra functionality" in manufacturer drivers).

 

I have an A/V receiver that does not have an HDMI input and was thinking about using the SPDIF output (via headphone jack) from the X505.
Has anyone tried to use it? What cable are you using?

judging by the Conexant audio control panel info, it appears that it may require an optical cable.

I called Toshiba tech support and also Toshiba Direct sales but they don't seem to be very knowledgeable about this.

 

I am going to buy a creative x5 pci card someday. I have the usb verison so thats good for now. Well thank god for windows 7 to have basic installed drivers.

 

x5 pci card? Where are you going to put that? Surely not in a laptop.....

If you are thinking the Xfi Expresscard, save your $. It doesn't have a hardware chip in it, your CPU does all the processing. What a waste that one is. LOL

 

Oh ok well i have the usb verison of it. What type of headphones do you have?

 

This is what i was talking about. Well I have four laptops now so it won't only be used for this machine. Creative 70SB095000004 24-bit 48KHz ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook.

 

Freedom, that card is junk. it does NOT have the true XFI chip in it. All processing occurs on the notebook's processor.

Go look at all the reviews everywhere. The software is poor as well.

If you really, really want one and are in the US, I'll sell you the "mistake" errr, the one I bought. LOL

 

lol, ok well then a good pair of speakers or headphones will have to do. Well i got mine today at my friends house but i won't be able to play with it until the next day at 6 oh well, i am like really exicited about this notebook, hopefully the drive doesn't fail like my slot load blu ray drive. I live in the US, where do you live compusmurf? It seems like your the only one who actually pays attention to this thread. lol

 

Ingvarr also does. You gotta remember, this machine is just over 1 month old and most of the world is in a recession and can't just run out and buy new toys right away. I suspect after Christmas, you may see more folks here.

I'm in the US. Tampa, Florida area.

 

I know i remember, most will be after Christmas, Toshiba should have sales for the machine. I am so excited for this machine!

 

I want to purchase the X505-Q830 and as of yesterday newegg is out of stock! Does anyone know of another good, reputable company i can buy it from online? I am in the U.S.

 

The guy who wants to know where to buy it, get it from J&R, jr.com, but buy it from the phone and try to get a type of discount but they are always in stock for a few and out of stock already since i have ordered last Tuesday. What is your budget, also best part if you live out of state you won't be charged taxes or shipping yeah!! I was dying with asthma and excitement for this machine man i am so happy to have it!

 

Jesus christ where is everyone?

 

can somebody post passmark scores.

 

Dont ask him, he probably doesn't know

 

I will run the test in a moment i just got home, this machine is awesome and hello lady i do know things, i just got the machine.

 

Here is a cpu Test using passmark, Burn it, any other questions don't be afraid to ask, i do have a question myself which is what other tests do you want?

 

Also the keyboard is very good, its kinda flat at times but it is really great.

 

Here is another CPU Test Result.

 

Thanks. I need to know this because the marks I saw in one of the newegg reviews are bit disappointing. but i dont really trust the newegg reviews.

passmark performance test will be more worthwhile as it gives summary of all critical components.

Actually I nearly pulled the trigger on order (knowing well that most probably I will not get warranty coverage). But when I saw the passmarks on newegg i wasn't sure anymore.

I really like this machine. Also freedom16, I have been following the posts on the blog for quite some time (though i didn't do much posting myself ), and I have seen that you thought of all four corners before selecting this lappy, so it has to be good.

Otherwise I will wait for a couple of months so that there are more options available.