Qosmio X300 Series owners' thread

To differentiate between the X300 (European) and X305 (American) models this thread should be used for the X300 series. For X305 click here. Both models look identical though do contain different hardware configurations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD00gUUqEvg - Official Toshiba UK Spec Video

 

A BIOS update for the X300 came out today. I suppose I should install it but I'm a bit hesitant since everything is working so nice at the moment

 

Hi Sue.

Got my x300 today. Nice!

I have checked the screen settings and tweaked them to the point of no return (you wouldn't want to change your settings after this!). Looks impressive now.

Fitting into the Targus XL is slightly tight towards the bottom, but the elastic strap to secure it fits well. Think I may still go for the Jansport anyway as I don't want to show the fact that I have a laptop in my bag and Targus is known for doing that. Shall post pics of my tweaked screen.

Remote control is micro- pretty amazing.

Power brick is huge and the laptop is on the thick side. The targus doesn't do much for making the load feel as light as you mentioned which makes more of a reason to switch bags.

Keyboard is great (although has some flex in it). Mousepad is good but would have pref. a synaptics branded one over this Alps one. Left and Right clickers are some of the best I've seen on any laptop.

And finally, of course, it's blazing fast which means it should stand up well for a few good years of ever more resource demanding software.

 

Would you mind posting the specifics of what you did for the screen? I'll do the same for what I have it set to at the moment. Of course, it's all personal. I tend toward liking vivid colours over anything else

Oh, the Jansport actually says "Lap Station" on the side - it's not hugely obvious being on the side but it could definitely allude to having a laptop. The machine itself within the bag is not obvious in the least, however.

The Jansport also has a mini strap thing that goes across the chest to further reduce the strain of it too.

Annd.. for some reason I accidentally edited out half of my post Woops.

I just insured my laptop with Toshiba for £49, all risks cover

 

I currently have my screen set like:

Brightness 35%
Digital Vibrance 50%
Contrast 60%
Gamma 32%

And individual colours:

Red

Brightness 40%
Digital Vibrance 50%
Contrast 60%
Gamma 32%

Green

Brightness 40%
Digital Vibrance 50%
Contrast 60%
Gamma 32%

Blue
Brightness 30%
Digital Vibrance 50%
Contrast 65%
Gamma 32%

 

Try the attached settings out and also set brightness via Fn + F7 to level 8.

As you say it is a personal thing, but I have spent a little time looking into minor details like shadow detail etc. so you should find it is quite good.

See how you like it.

Will also go for that firmware update. As the saying goes if it's not broken don't fix it, but bleh to that!

Have also adjusted the trackpad settings substantially enough to bring it closer to Synaptics performance i.e. increased sensitivity by 1 notch, speed by 1 notch, turned off click-lock and all scroll settings across all applications. Much better.

 

Someone post a 3dmark06 result plsssssssssssssssssssssssss lol i'm really dying to know xD

 

Edit: ok downloading 3dmark and will let you know

 

Ok thanks a bunch xD

 

Approx 7300 with the stock 2.0GHz CPU, etc. on 64Bit Vista.

 

Ya thats the result for the Q701, but the 11S has a few hardware improvements on that.

 

Well I'm not sure if I did it right or not but I got 7602 using the settings in the basic free 3d mark download.

Whilst testing I had HWMonitor running to see what the temps would be like and the maximums it hit were:

CPU 65
GPU 80 (it hit this on I think the second graphics test, the rest of them I saw temps around 65-70)
HDD 49

I might look into undervolting etc, or a cooling pad, but I'm not concerned. Generally my gaming is less intense than the 3d mark seemed to demand (WoW is my main game, soon Diablo III etc).

The keyboard is noticeably warmer but not uncomfortably so - you can only feel the difference in temperature if you rest your hands totally on it.

I had a Macbook Pro before and that absolutely cooked - GPU temps got well into the 90s and it felt it too. It put me off gaming on a laptop but this machine has restored my faith

Oh and another thing if you use a mouse - turn the touch pad off, I keep hitting it by mistake whilst typing and my cursor goes all over the place

 

This is how it looks with the tweaked screen. Although I did reduce the red gamma level more than other colours:



The screen can appear to suffer from backlight bleeding, but this is not the case for a healthy machine. The screen actually has poor viewing angles in general. Not terrible by any means, but below average I would say.

 

Hmm, I seem to notice blue more on mine, but that might just be because I favour red colours more, hehe

The sideways viewing angle isn't so great indeed but I'm impressed with the vertical. For laying down watching DVDs for example, this is handy.

 

All angles look the same to me in terms of quality loss to be honest. You do lose the quality even if you go slightly off-centre. It is quite sensitive to change of angles. But of course, regular desktop monitors are always stronger in this area.

 

Absolutely - it's only really fair to compare apples with apples. Or maybe oranges with oranges, before we get Mac fans involved!

I'm shortly going off to university which is why I went for the X300... but I may yet bring my gorgeous desktop LCD with me.

I was gaming a bit on the laptop earlier though and I was very happy with the picture (Afterall how often are you at an angle if playing a game on the laptop screen)

 

I'm in the same position to you sue! hence the reason for the entended warranty as these things can end up taking quite a beating over the course of edu. You entering an undergrad or postgrad course?

 

I also went for Toshiba's insurance policy - I found it to offer the best cover for a student. My residence includes basic insurance which conveniently doesn't cover laptops (in fairness, since they are portable it makes some sense), and to cover the Tosh it would have been another £80 for a package that didn't offer nearly as much as Toshiba's. £49 all risks, worldwide cover (so it's fine regardless of which address you are at) for a year which is renewable of course.

And it's undergrad for me but I'm coming up to 23 now so I don't expect to be out partying every night - spending out some cash on entertainment in this form should keep me sane though

 

I'm a tad older than you but also looking at a undergrad... I don't know about entertainment for me as my course will probably end up nailing me!

I actually took out seperate insurance which comes under home insurance so should be ok. They're all pretty standard policies to be honest. Working world is tough at the moment so perhaps a good time to study instead

 

Am I right in assuming the X300 sucks air in underneath through the three open bits and then it comes out at the back? (This seems like the obvious conclusion considering heat comes out of the back of the machine).

If so, I think the ZM-2000 Zalman cooler looks like just the ticket! Although it might fit on the ZM-1000...

 

Seems to be the case. I ran HWMonitor and have the following temps at idle:

CPU: Core 0: 37C, Core 1: 36C
GPU: Around 60-65C
HDD: 38C

Fan keeps running every 45 secs or so for a short while. Even updated the firmware. Is yours doing the same? I wouldn't like to add a cooler but looks like the system may end up needing it...

3dmark06 produced a score of 7610 so a touch higher than your earlier result of 7602.

 

I read somewhere that that could just be something to do with the RAM activating it - but what I read wasn't specific to our machine, just a general thing.

The temps don't worry me at all honestly - if you search the forums for a bit more about notebook temps we're doing fine

 

I think it just likes to get hot. Stepping down the hardware clock speeds should help. I think the noise bothers me more than the temp... sounds like a desktop!

 

Ok thanks guys =)

 

That's odd.. mine doesn't get loud at all!

 

That is strange. When I say loud however, think about a summer tabletop fan sort of loud on medium setting at intervals.

 

Ah well.. again I compare to my old Macbook Pro which got so loud it scared me. Seriously. It made me not want to game on it.

This one just sounds comfortable the whole time

 

I guess it's all relative. I once had a system which sounds like a hoover so had I transitioned straight from that, this may have seemed much quieter!

 

For anyone interested, Toshiba have now added an official video to their YouTube account of the X300:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD00gUUqEvg

 

Today I'm experimenting with undervolting There is inconsistency in the temps that HWMonitor and RightMark pickup though.

So HWMonitor maxed the CPU temp at 63 degrees before, and now after undervolting I'm at 57 as the highest on Core 1.

However, RMClock says the temps are at 49!

I dunno what to believe.

 

That's a tricky one. When in doubt, pull out!

Shouldn't do any harm though...

 

I've got a Zalman NC2000 cooler on the way.

Going by what others on this forum have reported, and my own experiences with the Macbook Pro, I think this laptop runs pretty cool whilst gaming in honesty. However, I still want to take the best possible care of it

 

One is probably the sensor on the actual CPU die and the lower temp is probably the thermal zone. Keep in mind, that temp sensors are highly inaccurate given %-error.

 

I wouldn't mind using the Zalman but I have one of these in place:

 

i just got an x300 from bestbuy canada, im gonna upgrade the processor sometime this week to a 2.5 at least. itll be pretty beastly

 

Let me know how the undervolting goes sue. Small steps at a time shouldn't harm the system.

 

Well a few things to report today.

I undervolted the highest multiplier to 1.0500V and it's completely stable. Below that I think the noise I was hearing is a form of CPU "whine" that others moaned about. That's down from 1.2000V btw. I set the other multipliers to automaticaly adjust.

The other thing is that my Zalman arrived today. It's almost inaudible. HWMonitor has my temps at

Core 1 37
Core 2 41
GPU 57
HDD 35

whilst just doing Windowsy things. Will be gaming soon.

 

Update! Gaming temps (according to HWM) (RMClock shows CPU at 43)

Core 1 46
Core 2 49
GPU 65
HDD 40

An improvement of about 8-10 degrees across the board!

 

Good stuff! But could you also let me know what the temps are without the Zalman as I won't likely be using it.

 

Hi. My X300 arrived yesterday. The red is a little in-yer-face, but I must say I'm impressed. Ofcourse the first thing I did was booted it with my Vista Ultimate X64 disk, and I've got almost everything running as I'd like. Except for the multimedia bar at the top.

Where on earth do I find the driver for these? At the moment all they do is flash when I press them (which I am assuming they are supposed to do), but not actually do anything to windoze.

On subject of temps I'm idling on 39CPU, spiking at 55 or so if I'm doing something CPU intensive.

~Ruu

 

Have you tried the Toshiba site? x64 always has had limited compatibility...

Try this: http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe....all&page=1&ID=63271&OSID=27&driverLanguage=42

 

Ahh. I got that far, I just didn't know what package to download. "Assist" sounded like bloatware. I guess it varies from manufacturer. My old dell actually had a "Media OSD" package.

Will give it a try in 5 mins. Currently on desktop. Brb

~Ruu

EDIT: Installed TOSHIBA Assist. Basically a whole program to open my mouse properties. Unless I'm missing something.

 

Hmmm. Try Remote Control Manager, that could be it even though it seems a little bonkers. The other possibilities I can think of are TRS Driver and "Tiles for Mobility Center" whatever that is... mostly I suggest those coz I dunno what they do ^^

 

Ok. I've tried every combination of ValueAdd, Remote Control, TRS.

Can someone please tell me what driver I need to install to make my media bar function. I had it working but I reinstalled vista using a vLite installation, 1gb disk instaed of 3.7gb.

~Ruu

 

Ok. Gathered some more intel. The software used for the media bar is the Toshiba Button Software (TBS) which is part of the Value Added stuff. I believe this is loaded by a file called HSON.exe at boot, but for some reason this application is not starting on my laptop. I have tried re-downloading, re-installing, but no joy.


~Ruu

 

Ok. Sorry for triple post .

Fixed it by installing full Vista instead of my vLited one. An extra 8gigs of bloat, but atleast the media bar works. And seemed to fix a dodgy mouse issue.

Thx again

~Ruu

 

One thing I've reaslied is that the touch controls tend to become less responsive when the system warms up. As they react to infra-red radiation from the touch of hands (and generally anything on earth that emits heat eneregy emits infra-red), the differential between the heat from hands and system heat becomes small enough to the point where responsiveness is lost. In this case, you will find the remote control is more effective. This is a design flaw. A heat deflector under the touch strip would have solved the problem.

 

Ok. I have another question. An OCZ Core SSD should go in the X300 ok, right? Just before I blow some cash on one incase it doesnt fit

~Ruu

 

so anyone update their video drivers? I'm still running the 175.90 drivers but want to tap more power, anyone recommend 177.xx drivers or what? Also I find that my sound seems soft and limited, I try and listen to the 2 top speakers but I don't think I can hear anything coming from them. Only the 2 lower speaker on the palm rest seem to make noise along with the bass on the underside, what gives? I have the x305

 

Hi guys...
I am a new owner off the x300
Anyway i noticed no one said anything about gaming on this laptop.
Well i tried it and cannot say i was impressed the game i played is Rainbow six vegas2.
Maybe it is because i didn't install?uninstall or update anything. so could you guys please tell me what you did to get peak performance..