Qosmio X300 Series owners' thread

Has anyone perhaps bought a extra battery for the 11s? I´m not quite satisfied with the battery capacity atm. Also which software is worth keeping that is already installed when you get your hands on it. I have only had it for a day and havn´t had the time to fully explore it yet.

 

I have the x300-11w and the vista boot is unbeliveable slow.
It takes 3 min for it to be ready in vista, does anyone know what could be wrong or what could be tweaked?

It has 4 gb of ram, 3.06Ghz core 2 duo extreme cpu.
32 bit vista

Ive removed stuff from start in msconfig to try to boost the boot but no success.
avg antivirus and zonealarm firewall installed on it.

how fast/slow are your boot times?

 

It´s the same for me. I wonder why they include the vista 32-bit instead of the 64-bit. Wouldn´t the 64-bit boost the perforance a little bit?

 

I hope so

I am installing 64bit in a few moments. Just need to check i've backed up the stuff I want to.

 

what is the best speaker setting?
I really cannot hear the bass that it is supposed to have?

 

ok after installin Vista Ultimate 64bit the boot time went down to 60 sec.
After install of all drivers and updates in windows boot time is 1min 20sec approx

 

There is a setting called natural bass in the dolby section. Disable that and it will improve, it did for me anyway.

Does anyone know if you can add a second hard drive internaly?

 

Ok. Could be worth changing to the 64-bit then perhaps.

Edit: Btw, did you clear the whole drive or did you keep the HDDRecovery from Toshiba? I´m worried that I will screw something up.

 

before I started I downloaded 500-600mb 64bit drivers from Toshiba's site.
Then I ran the Toshiba recovery program and burned 2 dvd's with it.
Then I formatted and installed 64bit vista.


BTW: Does anyone know how to enable the program that works with the "fn" key? There was an onscreen display when I pressed it when on Toshiba's pre-installed 32bit vista?? :/

 

x300 11W Futuremark 06: 9554

 

I tried to get hold off one around a month ago to no avail. Would try again soon enough though.

Same here, I recommend for now using hibernate mode until updates/vista tweaks are made available and are improved. I suspect the biometrics has a part to play.

I get 7610 on the X300-11s so yours is around 25% faster. Not sure if I would pay double the price though! What's the screen quality like?

 

Ok I will do that. Do you know if you can add a spare harddrive to the computer?

 

I was wondering the same thing. I installed 64-bit and sofar so good I have to say. Will try some gaming later on.

 

I was considering buying this laptop, the specs on it look great.

Can anyone tell me what it's like for gaming? It seems like it would be great, but I'd love to get some user feedback before buying.

Thanks very much!

 

I am having some issues. First off when I have been using applications that require alot of memory the memory usage shoots up to around 95%. However when I have stopped using the application the memory usage is still 95%.
Also, have you guys found the the harddrive is REALLY slow? Like when installing games or unpacking stuff, it takes FOREVER. Took me like 16min to unpack a game.

Ok, last thing. I installed all off the 64-bit updates on the toshiba website are there any which I could have skipped?

 

I have ordered the X300 11S with the possibility to cancel the order. After reading the comments here I feel that i maybe Should cancel it. The cpu and gpu specs tells me that its a "fast" computer but from what im reading here its not. Is it possible to do a clean xp install on it? Maybe Vista is slowing it down?

Should i cancel my order before its too late?

 

It's very fast, installs apps quick etc. Bear in mind that the hardware contained is cutting edge (rather than the bleeding edge of the 11w). Bootup is slow for some reason but it could be due to a number of reasons. Ultimately you should buy what you feel comfortable with but a number of us here are happy with our systems on balance.

 

What you are reading can´t be classified as complaining, more like tweaking. It is FAST, trust me. I spent a bunch of cash on it and I don´t regret it at all.

 

Thank you. That's what I wanted to hear. I hope I can play cod4 at steady 125fps with no fps drops.

But booting windows for 3 minutes? I hope this is solvable cause i dont have 64bit vista to upgrade with.

 

I think it might be solved with a fresh install and only the necessary drivers nad some tweaks. The 64-bit did in fact lower the boot time by quite a bit. I have only played pure from disney with maxed out graphics and it didn´t lagg one bit. Will install COD 4 and get back to you?

 

Yes it would be interesting to know how well it runs cod4 and if it gets too hot, etc.
The vista disc with cd-key and all is included in the package? I ask this because the OS-disc wasnt included with my current laptop, a Dell Inspiron 9300, that i bought 3½ year ago.
When doing a fresh install, do I just format the drive and boot/install through dvd as usual when installing an OS?

Thanks

 

If you want to play CoD4 at 125fps (at high settings) get a desktop now unless you want to go for the 11w which is above £2k/$4k.

 

Im talking about low settings. Sorry, I should have added that.

 

It would do that without issue. I noticed no frame drops when testing it.

 

just tested COD4 on my x300 11w

Played with no diffeculty at all on max settings.
Lowest fps was at 40 at certain points in 1620x resolution

 

I just came off COD4 also on the 11s, but at 1440x900, no frame drops at max settings.

 

Same here. Maxed out settings with frames around 50-70fps and on low settings the frames varied between 120-160 at 1440x900. Didn´t turn off everything though.

 

Ok seems it will run cod4 fine on low settings. Thanks for testing.

Now, is the Vista OS disc being included in the package?

Thanks

 

I didn´t get one. The vistakey, however, is included on the back of the laptop. I believe you can make some sort of backup dvd once the included version of vista is installed.

 

I see. So this backup will be a "clean" version of Vista? Otherwise I really dont know how I can do a clean install without having to buy a new copy of it..

 

I resolved the issue. After speaking with the toshiba support I was informed that your need to install the drivers in a certain order. Everything works like a charm for me again

 

I think that is nonsence from the support guy

But I figured it out I had missed 1 driver.
It was the Flash Card Utility that controls the FN keys and OSD

 

Well, I really didn´t miss a driver the first time around and after searching on the web I found out that this is a common problem.

 

Quick question on slow load up times would it be possible to fit 1gb of turbo memory to this latops as that i hear would reduce this?

 

Hey guys. Me again. I am really enjoying my X300 but I have another query. Does the chipset support RAID? I bought a second hard drive, and whilst I noticed a performance increase changing my windows temp and swap onto the second disk, I could ofcourse gain an even bigger performance increase by RAID0'ing the two disks. (This is the setup I have in my desktop.)

Thanks again,
Ruu.

 

Depends
If youhave windows vista 32bit or 64bit edition.
If you have the 32 bit edition you have allready used up that OS' capasity for ram ( which is 4 gb of ram counting all of the different ram ; ram, gfx ram etc )

 

But the computer itself has the appropriate slot? i read thatthey need a mini-PCIe thats how a read it on wiki but i could be wrong dont really know what i am talking about

 

Ok, I know what caused it. It was a program called utorrent which caused a memeory decrease. Anyway, tweaked some settings and now it´s running like a charm.

 

I have recieved my X300 now and I have to agree. When the gpu gets to 65C the very noisy fan runs until it gets down to 55C and then starts again at 65. And this is when it's IDLE so it happens with an approx 30 second intervall All the time.

How do I "Step down the hardware clock speeds"? I didnt find that in the BIOS.

Please help

 

2 options:
1. Get the Zalman NC2000 laptop cooler to knock off some heat
2. Look up undervolting and give that a go if you're feeling more adventurous

 

now I'm worried. This Gpu temp seems to be a defect. On my x205 it would idle at 60 degrees celcius and stay stable plus minus 1 degree. But on the x305 the temp never stablizes but seems to always keep climbing if it wasn't for the fans kicking in. Will this be a prob? Because now I think back looking at the display one in Best buy, I noticed the fan on the underside had a lot of dust build up. Also will the newer display driver (176.18) help control the temp? Now that I'm aware of this it's irritating the hell out of me listening to the fan go off and I'm constantly looking at Nvidia system monitor gpu temp and feeling sick seeing the temp climb. Finally is this normal? I mean do other video cards temps keep climbing, or does it stablize at a certain temp? Is this the only gaming notebook that doesn't stablize at an idle temp? Disappointed now.

 

ok people as of today i am in a position to buy this laptop could anyone else comment on the issue that jacob808 is talking about. Comments on things like is yours the same with the temps climbing even if idle, do you see it as a problem, is the fan more than capable of making sure this does not heat up to the point of causing damage, is the fan actually loud for a 17" decent GPU laptop or is the sound really only loud if you are used to a 15" laptop without much in as far as GPU goes to heat them up?

Thanks people

 

I would not worry about the GPU temperature as these Laptops and GPU's seem to be very tough. I have the powerful little brother Qosmio F55 with the same GPU but I installed a Intel Extreme X9100 on mine. Doing some stability testing on mine I ran Prime95 to stress the CPU, ran it for 6 hours while I was at work, both cores showed 100% @ between 95-97 degress Celsius. Ran Furmark to stress the GPU and it ran for 3 hours straight with the GPU running at 100% @ approx. 95 degrees Celsius. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Has anyone seen the flames on the lid illuminating? According to this review they do (unless I've misunderstood):

http://www.bangkokpost.com/gadget/gadget.php?id=676

 

Hi guys ok i did a clean install and now i have a problem...

1 I installed the latest bios update but now it says i have 2.99gb instead on 3gb(i know its not a trainsmash but is something wrong?

2 I cant seeem ti get my blutooth to work i installed the drivers but it keeps searching for drivers and says it cant detect my blutooth device?

3 My remote and media buttons at the top dont work anymore.

4 The mouse touch pad doesn't work like it used either.. I could just scroll up using it but now i cant..

Any advice,remember this started after the clean install of vista.

PS how do i check what i can and cannot upgrade on this laptop?

 

It's always worth making an image of the original HDD content before doing anything else. I had it done from day one to avoid any headaches later. Best thing you can do now is contact Tosh support and ask them for a list of drivers if you cannot do it yourself.

 

I did make a back up dvd but wont that reinstall the bloatware etc?

 

The Zalman NC2000 knocks off 16C from the idle GPU temp. That's more than what was originally reported. Seems to be effective enough.

 

Does anybody else have a problem with the keyboard feeling very loose around the arrowkeys ?
Actually it feels like the plastic is hovering a half millimeter above the chassis, so typing makes this annoying clicking sound. It feels VERY cheap indeed.
Is there a solution (a way to remove the plasticcover and perhabs gluing to the chassis) that does not break the keyboard or the warranty ?

 

Regarding the fan running every 30 seconds:
I had the same problem and tried underclocking with Riva Tuner but finally i solved it by grabbing a modded Vista 32 Nvidia driver from laptopvideo2go.com (178.13) and that solved the problem.
Now the driver actually steps down the GPU and memoryclock when not doing intensive 3d. Now my normal temperature is around 50 degrees C, even when running Aero, and the GPU-fan never kicks in when just doing normal Windoze-things