Quick Review for Toshiba Satellite M100-ST511

This is just a quick review for my new Toshiba Satellite M100-ST5211.

Specs:
14.1” XGA Widescreen TruBrite Display (1280x768)
Intel Core Duo 1.83ghz
1GB system RAM (533mhz)
80GB 5400rpm HD
ATI x1400/128MB RAM (though it says 256MB in all of the widows panels, most likely hyper memory)
Atheros AGB wireless
CD-RW/DVD-R/W
Harmon/Kardon speakers

What I Was Looking For:
I was looking for a laptop to replace my old Micron desktop. The Micron was the best PC I ever owned. I called tech support exactly zero (0) times throughout its 5 year life. Since I’m going to grad school in the fall I wanted something portable I could take to the library if need be yet still have some power to run games. I wanted at least a 12 inch screen but nothing more then a 15 inch one. I wanted the Core Duo and a decent video card.
I knew I didn’t want a Dell (I’d rather just burn my money thank you) or Gateway (nice PCs but bad specs). I wanted another Micron (now MPC Corp [they’re the ones who fund the MPC Computers Bowl, the one with the hedious blue turf in Idaho]), but they were too expensive. So it was between the new Sony SZ series and the Toshiba.
I ultimately went with the Toshiba because they were having a great sale, 25% off and free 2nd day air shipping. So the total price was about $1375 including tax. I think that’s a pretty good deal considering the Sony was somewhere around $1700 similarly configured.

Performance:
Since this is why we’re all here. This baby is fast. Plugged in this plays Elder Scrolls: Oblivion at pretty high graphic settings no sweat. Even with lots of spells and flashing swords the x1400 works great. So any older game (HL2 or Counter-Strike Source) will run great also.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are snappy. There’s no lag during saving large files. However I am using a beta of Office 2007 so maybe its just better code. I would definitely recommend spend the extra money to upgrade to the 128MB x1400 as 64MB of video memory won’t run squat these days.

Heat:
I’ve had this on my lap for over an hour (I can tell because the Mets game was over an hour ago) and my left leg is slightly warm. The fan is on but is extremely quiet. I have noticed however, that the longer the laptop is plugged in the longer the fan is on. Overall though heat buildup is minimal at best.

Cons:
For whatever reason I cannot update the drivers for the video card. It gives me the following error: “INF error, video driver not found" then when I click ok I get the following message "Setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup."

Conclusion:
That’s the only problem I have right now. In about a week I’ll post a longer review hopefully with pictures.

 

Nice nutshell review. Maybe you should email abaxter and write a full fledged review.

 

thanks for the short review here crocto. once you've formed a firmer opinion and had more experience let me know if you want to do a full review and have it posted to the site, check out guidelines and contact info for that here: http://www.notebookreview.com/writeReview/

 

Sure. I've only had it about a week or so. I'll need another week or so to run a few of those tests (super pi etc).

 

Regarding the driver installation issue, you may try installing the driver from hardware manager. I had the same issue while trying to install the drivers using the .exe. However using the hardware manager had no problems.

 

You can't update your graphics card driver with drivers from Nvidia - Nvidia has made it the responsibility of the company that you buy your laptop from (in your case toshiba) to come out with graphics card driver updates. I've had a toshiba for a year and a half now and toshiba hasn't released a single update for my laptop (qosmio f15) so i just updated manually using either Omega's drivers ( www.omegadrivers.net) or www.laptopvideo2go.com

 

yes i know. all that but i have an ati card. and know of omega so i'll give those a shot.