Sattelite M100 Owners

I'm thinking about purchasing one of the M100s and am curious to see if any of you have had problems with it. I've only found one review on it so I'm a little hesitant. Which options do you particularly like and if you had a chance to do it all over again, would you purchase it again? Thanks in advance!

 

I think there are two full reviews of the m100 on the internet:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2876&review=Toshiba+Satellite+M100
and
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=47283

I'm also thinking about getting an m100 so any posts will help.

 

Just got mine today, 2.0 core duo, 1 gig, ATI x1400 etc.. Ordered it from Toshiba Direct. First one I ordered was damaged in shipping but one phone call to Toshiba and they built me a new one. So far I love it. No major complaints. Played with it for about two hours. As soon as I get a chance to evaluate it a little more I'll update the post. But for the price/value it seems like a homerun.

 

Is the screen good? I've heard some complaints about the screen being not as good as previous models (M50/M40, etc.). In addition, are you having fan/heat issues?

 

I like mine. It gets warm on the palm areas. The screen seems fine.

 

As far as the screen is concerned, it's fairly bright, good contrast, and no dead pixels. I'd say the only laptops with a tad better screen are some of the Sony models. The glossy screen took some getting used to as my last laptop had a matte screen. Movies look awsome. Text is crisp and clear.

As far as Fan/Heat is concerned, the fan runs most of the time but is very quiet. When doing graphic or processor intensive tasks the fan kicks up faster and louder but I don't find it annoying. I'd rather have the fan do it's job than have compnents fail prematutrely due to heat build up. Every component has what they call MTBF rating. (mean time before failure). This rating is in hours. Excessive heat can drastically lowers the MTBF. So I say let the fan run! The right side of the palm rest gets a little warm but never hot. At no time do I find it bothersome.

I played with this laptop for several hours last night and I have to say I'm impressed. It's a solidly built performer. I did all kinds of research for months to find the perfect laptop which led me to conclude that such a thing doesn't exist. As far as I am concerned this is a great laptop at a good price.

 

Does anyone know what the difference is between the M100 and the M105?

 

i think the main difference is that the m100 is customizable, while the m105 only comes with preconfigured models. also, the m105 does not give a choice of having a dedicated graphics card. i did notice that the m100 starts at .2 lb less.

 

I wrote that second review, but I had problems with the laptop afterwards and had to return it.


The laptop wasn't booting up for me, even after multiple fresh OS installs (factory install). I was on the 15th day of the return period so I couldn't do in depth trouble shooting. All i know is that it was a hardware problem, and it wasnt my ram.

Before you make your decision, i suggest that you take a look at the Asus W3J. Asus isn't a well known company, but they've make vaios, powerbooks, and some dells...as well as being the #1 motherboard maker inthe world.
http://proportable.com/detail.aspx?ID=107

Good luck!

 

Arvin,

Did you switch to the W3J? I have been looking at both the M100 and the
W3J and I am trying to decide which one to go with. There isn't a lot of information on either of these units. I don't know a lot about ASUS. Do you know how durable their units are? I am really torn between these machines and I need to make a decision soon.

 

Rsq, I'm getting a W3J as soon as they hit stateside.

Asus is one of the few companies that manufactures their own hardware. They even make quite a few dells, Sony Vaios, and Apples. Aside from being the #1 motherboard manufacturer in the world, they make one hell of a laptop. Especially this W series - its their flagship series and it's build quality has been been said to be on par and even surpass the apple macbook pro. But that was from someone else's experience.

the M100 with W3J specs is similarly priced. The only thing that the M100 has over the W3J is that it's HDD interface is SATA, while the W3J is PATA. It's been said that the difference in the updated SATA interface can only really be seen in benchmarks, so thats not even a selling point for me. What IS a selling point for me is the ATI X1600 which is more than twice as powerful than the X1400. It's really amazing that they could fit it in a 14.1" laptop - currently the only 14.1" laptop on the market with an X1600.

The W3J is 1.83 Ghz, and you're not going to be seeing any difference with a 2.0Ghz cpu...maybe a few minutes off of encoding a dvd, but its neglegible. And like I said in my full review of the M100, the build quality is decent, but it leaves a lot to be missed.

The W3J will be out next month. If you can wait, I HIGHLY suggest doing so, or you might regret it like I did. It's also important to buy through a good Asus vendor, since you cannot buy directly from asus. I recoment proportable.com, because the owner, justin, is ALWAYS in the Asus forum.

You should go in there yourself and read up if you're interested. Hope to see you there.

 

did anyone tried installing newest BIOS version in M100 (1.70 it is) and is able to write a few words about things that had changed ??