Portege R700 - the thin and light 13.3"

funny stuff...


if you expect high fidelity sound from this machine you are going to be disappointed.
I had a chance to examine its sound capabilities yesterday and these were my observations. for one the volume level is very weak. I tested it out with my high-end headphones and it was not crisp and loud enough. the base level was pretty good though. I was hoping it would at least be able to match an iphone/ipod sound quality but that wasn't the case. I guess i might have to invest in an external soundcard if I go with this.

 

My guess is the 13" Sony VAIO VPCS111FM/S. That model is one of Best Buy's Blue Label models. The others are 14" models made by Dell and Toshiba.

At my local Best Buy, I have never seen a Sony Z series on display.

 

In 'normal' activity (web browsing, Word, Excel, PPT) it does not really get that hot. Now if you want to talk about hot, the Dell XPS 1645, that gets hot...

 

I think the Sony Z is on-line only for BestBuy - I also have yet to see on in person at a BestBuy, but SonyStyle stores have them available to look at. The Z is a great machine, packs a lot of power in a small package, but is really expensive. Honestly, the R705 also felt a bit more sturdy IMHO

 

That's odd. Most headphone outs produce pretty much the same standard sound levels. It could be that, between the levels on the media player, the volume mixer in Windows, and the Toshiba's master volume control, something was not all the way up. Hopefully? But it's true, for low latency one should have some kind of off-board soundcard. I found the Behringer U-Control to be more than sufficient for laptop work, and it's like 25 bucks.

Anyway, your warning is taken under advisement. I'll bring some headphones with me today and let you know what I find out.

 

There's only 1 laptop I know of that can take 85+ F in direct sunlight and stay cool. It's a 17" Clevo gaming monster that weighs almost 8 lbs, thank to its cooling system which is chock full of copper blocks.

Seriously, look at what you wrote. No laptop will stay cool under the scenario you described.

My wallet would heat up under those conditions, and it doesn't even have a battery or generate heat on its own.

 

You are correct.

I have to amend my previous statements regarding ECO MODE (I was wrong). It's actually an intelligent and useful option that Toshiba provided its users regarding non-CPU intensive tasks.

 

Or consider getting an iPod.

I think some of you don't quite understand the target demographic of this laptop. I clearly spell it out in some of my lengthy posts earlier.

 

Hi! First post... please be nice

I recently bought a pair of R700-15U's for work where I only use Linux. Overall the R700 is completely usable under Ubuntu but there is a few issues that ideally need to be resolved.

Ive created a thread on the ubuntu forums to track hardware functionality that I thought some of you R700/R705 fanatics might be interested in.

Cheers!

 

get off your high horse there toshiba fanboy (i didn't know there were any...lol)!

People use their laptop’s sound capabilities for more than just listening to music. Here are some reasons for having high-fidelity sound on your ultra portable notebook:
- your music collection is too big to fit in a portable mp3 player.
- you want to experience the rich sound of HD videos online or offline
- you want to record high quality/distortion free
- improve your software's speech recognition
- you are into sound production/mixing/editing on the go like outnumbered here.
- and so on…


People do more and EXPECT more from their ultraportable than just word/excel editing, online banking and forums!

BTW, I tested the Sony Vaio Z and the same story. Poor sound quality is more of a norm than exception on most laptops/desktops out there.

 

The R700 always runs warm... even when not doing much, but it doesn't get too hot. I setup mine to transcode HD video to SD for over 48hours straight and it didnt get hotter than when it was idling.

 

Solved

 

Thanks! i have actually been looking at that. i have the older Creative Audigy on my old laptop and it rocks both under windows and linux.

 

Nope and nope! The Best Buy near me always carries the Z12.

I agree that the R700 is a better deal than the Z (that's why I own one of each)

 

As has been stated earlier in this thread, ultraportables are about compromise. Given the target demographic, one of the first things to be compromised on is multimedia capabilities.

That said, there is a fantastic option for those who want a strong multimedia ultraportable; the Alienware m11x.

Back on topic: the choice between this laptop (the r700) and the Thinkpad x201i is killing me! They both have so many good points!

 

Nicely done. It doesn't look like there is anything too catastrophic. Battery life in Ubuntu is essentially the same as Windows 7. I am getting 4.5 - 5 hours depending on what I am doing. I would like to hear if there is any change after you get Bluetooth and other power options under control.

 

There isn't a high horse for me to get off of. And as you correctly surmised, there aren't much in the way of Toshiba fanboys.

The simple fact is that you assume that laptops and their inherent sound capabilities should satisfy your multimedia tastes. And that is the wrong assumption to make.

There are quite a few laptops that don't excel at those tasks, even though they are capable of performing them to a satisfactory level.

Once you understand that, you'll be on your way to finding the right laptop for you.

 

Just remember that it was RWUK that was the original poster. I was guessing that the Blue Label laptop was the other 13" he was seeing and so are you.

 

After Jamshil posted, I grabbed my son's over-the-ear headphones to try out Pandora and Rhapsody. These headphones are the best we have. Sound only came out of the left channel. I grabbed my son's Ipod headphones. Same result - Left channel only.

After a quick Google search, I opened Realtek's HD Audio Manager. I changed settings, but no still no headphone sound on the right channel. I resorted to reinstalling the Realtek driver but it didn't change anything.

I tried everything for the next hour. Begrudgingly, I started to look up my warranty information when my son came in the room. He looked at the headphones I was using and said "Are you getting sound from only one side?. Both of those headphones are broken." Sure enough, I tried my jogging headphone and guess what? Sound from both sides!!!

I am getting plenty of volume and it sounds great using headphones to me but I don't proclaim myself to be an audiophile.

 

Incidentally, why aren't there any Toshiba fanboys? The Asus forums are jam-packed. Folks there will talk for over 100 pages about computers that haven't even come out yet. Whereas the Toshiba forum seems relatively unpopulated. Toshiba doesn't make popular laptops? Or what?

 

Well, I just got back from BestBuy and here are my thoughts on the keyboard and headphone out.

Keyboard: I don't know what you people are sticking in your windpipes, but this keyboard is great! Maybe I'll have to get used to it a little because of the proportions, but I have to say having less distance to reach from the palmrests is a brilliant feature. The action is equally fine. I didn't sense any of the sponginess, limpness or squeakiness that others have reported. I think these are descriptions that justify a gut feeling from people who were not 100% with the action. Maybe I'm lucky -- I've gone from keyboard to keyboard, spanning all the available sizes, so it's easy for me to adapt. But I did some stream of consciousness typing for about five minutes, checked my work, and there were no keystroke errors. I think the keyboard is a selling point.

Headphone jack: Maybe Jamshil got a bunk floor model, but the one I tried out was not disappointingly quiet. I use Massive Attack - Mezzanine as my benchmark for testing audio quality. The highs were crisp, the lows were thick, and the definition between ranges was just right. Maybe I've been using some crap headphone ports in the recent past, but I didn't feel like the sound on the Portege fell short at all. Of course, then I stupidly unplugged and walked away without checking out the built-in speakers. But I already know they'll be thin and I'm not really concerned about it.

The machine was running full-bore on Balanced Mode, and I didn't notice excessive heat or fan noise. In short, I walked out of that place doing something I never do at Best Buy: smiling. I'm ready to throw down my money and get on with my life.

A quick note on selecting a laptop for audio production: I think that to say an entertainment-oriented laptop would be better suited for this sort of thing is misinformed. Audio production depends on raw CPU power and soundcard, and because all the soundcards that matter are external anyway, there's no reason not to put a business laptop to this kind of work.

connect404 and jamshil: could you please explain what this Creative card does? Does it plug into a USB port? That looks like a slot card, but it's hard to make sense of the proportions from the picture. And does it support low-latency, such as ASIO?

And one last question for anyone who owns one of these, does the lid fully cover the base when it's closed? The lid on the floor model at Best Buy closed about 1/16" shy of the base, making it harder to open and frankly looking kind of stupid. Say it ain't so, man, 'cause this is a deal-breaker. Just kidding.

 

In my experience, the only people that I've seen carry Toshiba laptops were professional types, like me (going back to the early 1990s when they looked like bricks).

We typically make poor fanboys. We're too smart to jump on a bandwagon just for the sake of it.

 

Yes, looking at side profile pics, the top lid is slightly shorter than the bottom. I believe this is done intentionally so that the laptop's system indicator LEDs, which are below the trackpad's mouse buttons, can be easily seen while the lid is closed.

Were you impressed with how light the laptop was?

 

Best Buy doesn't leave the battery in the machine, so one might be impressed with almost any laptop's weight there, but I have no trouble believing it's 3.2 pounds with the battery. If so, that combined with the overall form factor (it's incredibly slim with nice, square edges) makes this computer jaw-droppingly nice to the touch. I can't believe they fit an optical drive in this thing.

 

So what have you narrowed your choices down to?

 

Alright, I'm in. Just placed my order with New Egg. $1,212.64 shipped. With my luck, it'll arrive on Saturday and I'll have to wait until Monday for delivery. But whatever. And for the record, bankergolfer, I think this purchase went down without a single compromise. In case you haven't noticed from my recent posts, I think this computer is brilliant in every way. My previous considerations were the Asus UL30JT, PL30JT and U33JC, the Acer 3820tg, and the HP Envy 14. This machine beats them all in every category, in my opinion.

 

I had a Toshiba laptop from about 1995-1999, for most of my grad school years, and I loved it. Solid as a rock, and I loved the trackpoint. (Why the heck do so few laptop manufacturers offer those as an option now?) I just found it odd that so few of the techies on this site seemed to gravitate toward 'em. The Asus board has a lot of discussions of keyboard modifications and various maneuvers such as overclocking or underclocking. Seems like there's just about none of that here. I guess it's b/c of the business user aspect.

 

Well, if and when Pixel Qi releases DIY 13.3" panels, I'll be one of the first to order it. As for overclocking, it would be nice to hear some discussion, because you can certainly do it with these Porteges. Even more so with the i5 models. What kind of mods did you have in mind?

 

Which Best Buy in San Diego - I have been to 4 in the area and NONE have the Z.

 

Here's an upgrade question. Right now, the top two SSDs seem to be the OCZ Vertex 2 and the Crucial c300. The Crucial claims faster read speeds than the OCZ, but requires SATA 3.0 and 6Gbps support. Does this describe the Portege? I can't find it on the insultingly limited spec sheet.

 

True, true...

 

Yeah, before I decided on the R705, the sheer number of posts in the Asus forums actually swayed me for a bit. Part of it was the passion and creativity of the Asus owners in modding their machines (I almost wanted a UL30VT just to get a chance to mod a backlit keyboard!), and part of it was the practicality of sharing laptop problems/quirks/experiences with a large rabid fanbase. But everybody here on the R700 board was ridiculously helpful as well, and this machine kicks 31 flavors of a$$ so I'm glad I made the right decision!

 

Yeah, I feel that. A big part of the Asus community is the taste for opening things up and making them better. A lot of this has to do with Asus being forerunners in the netbook market -- those machines were so cheap and so bare-bones, it was like they were made to be broken into. I owned two and actually first found out how useful and encouraging online notebook communities could be through the eeeuser forums.

But I think those days are sadly over. Netbooks are a little too good to bust open, and maybe a little too pricey as well. I've had a bad share of warranties voided trying to make the perfect netbook (my worst experience was with Samsung), and I kind of want to play it safe for now. For a long time, I was sure I'd buy whatever computer Bronsky bought, but he's more confident in tossing away his warranty than I am, and that's an important factor to consider. He'll tell you that himself.

Discovering the Toshiba totally changed everything. It's everything I want in a computer, and only a shade more expensive than an upgraded Asus or Acer. If I can upgrade to an SSD and later get my USB 3.0 kicks with the port replicator, then this is all the computer I'll need for a long time. I may have said I didn't need an optical drive in the past, but if you can have one and still come in at 3 pounds, I say take it. This computer is just achingly good. I can't wait to dump my life into it.

 

la resistance's account of his romance with the Asus board pretty much captures my own. The backlit keyboard mod struck me as eminently do-able and unbelievably cheap. When I first got this r705 and felt that it was too hot I wondered about undervolting it-- admittedly, I'm extremely uninformed about such stuff-- but now I've gotten used to the temps. That sort of thing, nothing too elaborate.

 

Oh ho! I get it! I had to take a couple looks at the images on Toshiba's site -- I didn't even know the 1320 has an expresscard slot, and I already bought the damn thing! This is just too good to believe. Time to get my MOTU 828 back.

 

Interesting observation. I didn't think the sound quality was poor. it was just mediocre. And the fidelity and volume was not on par with the devices I usually listen through (Creative Audigy and iPhone). I think the stock sound would be adequate for most people out there but not if you are more into sound as i described earlier.

I can't speak so much for Creative X-Fi Notebook. But the Audigy 2 ZS Notebook that i have gives you the power and connectivity of a full blown desktop soundcard in small notebook friendly package. when coupled with a compatible set of speakers you can get 7.1 surround sound through it's proprietary connector.

these devices connect through your PCMCIA/ExpressCard/USB and take over sound responsibilities from your onboard sound chip and CPU. in general they all give improved 2D sound. the downside is that you cannot use your built-in notebook speakers with these cards. it also sticks out a little so you have to take that into account when buying a case (if you don't want to bother taking it out every time).

As for ASIO, Audigy does support it but looks like X-Fi doesn't. Audigy connects through PCMCIA card so it is out of the question for R700 users. and i'm not too crazy about X-Fi (the wireless capability sounds good tho) as it is rather old and may not have perfect driver support under Win 7. it seems to be discounted everywhere so it might soon be replaced by a newer card from Creative.

 

Crucial C300 is backward compatible with SATA 2, which the r700 has.

Crucial one is better in terms of speed and price. Its write speed is less than OCZ's but frequency of reads is always higher than writes for typical users and therefore higher read speed benefits you more.

 

Always runs warm? Always feels warm even on palmrest and touchpad, too? Or just the bottom? Or just the top-left corner of the bottom only?

 

Just because kids talk about modding their Honda civics and Nissan Skylines doesn't mean I feel particularly inspired to sell my Mercedes AMG sports sedan and join the crowd.

First, I get a laptop to serve as a tool, not the other way around where I'm tooling the laptop.

Second, a lot of what they're doing can potentially void their warranties. Not a smart move in my book.

Third, a lot of the modding is geared towards gaming (OC GPUs, and in some rare instances, CPUs). As this laptop isn't a gamer, there isn't much we have to talk about that.

 

I just wrote a post helping out some people at the forums at Toshiba.com. Turns out a lot of them are confused about the battery life of the R705, not to mention the 8.5% battery wear that are built into the batteries.

Told them they should spend less time there and come join us here. Definitely more useful conversations on our end here.

 

I am definitely in for reads over writes. I mostly want to use the SSD to benefit audio production, which involves calling a large number of WAV files from disk in unison, and always requires fast recall of data to keep time with processing. But in my experience, backward compatibility means loss of performance. Will I not have this experience using the Crucial with the Portege?

 

Guys, I may have to jump ship. I'm considering canceling my BB order for the R705 and buying the Acer 3820TG instead.

Decisions, decisions.....

 

As I mentioned, I'll probably just go with the U-Control, and use an expresscard<->firewire card so I can use my firewire interface when I'm doing something serious. The big annoyance looks like any expresscard device will block the optical drive from opening, so it would be a good idea to pull whatever expresscard device one is using before resuming normal use. Thanks for your insights. Glad to know there is another sound person on these boards.

 

I think the phrase "runs warm" may be misleading. Fram what I gather, the Portege tries to kick out whatever heat through a single vent, which means that if it does it successfully, that vent will be warm because it is taking the brunt of the exhaust. It may be uncomfortable, but the fact that the heat is not intense near the HDD or CPU is a sign of great benefit. Then again, I never use my laptop on my lap. I usually keep it on a desk or whoever is sleeping next to me.

 

Yeah, I've seen you over there stumping. You missed that sweet deal -- why don't you come over here and join us, or perhaps move to Canada? I hear they have lots of Staples outlets in the Yukon.

 

I suppose I'll just sit tight and wait for the R705 to arrive in 1 week. Maybe I'll get lucky and another sale will pop up.

I haven't seen the R705 laptop yet in person. I should go check out the keyboard for myself.

 

Sure. you welcome.

people don't realize how useful an expresscard could be. for those of you not wanting to shell out big $$$ for the the toshiba port replicator to get USB 3.0 ports you could opt-out for a much cheaper and more portable option like this.

 

outnumbered, did you get the S1320 or the S1321?

 

1320. All I saw in the 1321 was something to do with super-double-something-doing to a DVD-R, and I don't really even do the un-super thing, so I didn't really consider it.

 

Life is getting better by the second! Thanks for the link.