Toshiba A45 S250

Hey guys,

sorry i posted this on the hardware forum but wanted to get the toshiba experts some exposure too..

I wanted your opinion on something. I just purchased a toshiba a45 s250 and I got a killer deal on it at Fry's $1200 after rebate. I've had it for the past week and I love it so far. My only concern is the graphics card is shared on the mother board up to 64mb.

Now I'll be using this computer for surfing, power point presentations, word processing and most importantly video editing. I was kinda getting into it wiht my desktop but my situation has called that I get a laptop (since i'll be traveling from nyc to texas every month).

I hate to give up this deal but should i give up the computer and look for a laptop with a dedicated graphics card? Will my video editing suffer because of my current card.

I know its a budget laptop but the fact that it has a dvd burner and a huge battery make it a plus.

oh yeah how is the toshiba warranty? is it worth the extra dough to spring for it? anybody with experience out there?

thanx,
mark

 

I don't think there should be any issues with the graphics card or shared memory for what you will be doing. Having dedicated video memory will help in game play. Video editing will have to do more with CPU, System RAM & hard drive space/speed.
I just did a search for this unit on google and found that it has an Intel852GME graphics chip, here's the link below, they also have a review on this unit:

http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,115913,00.asp

Since the video shares the system memory it may cause a slight performance drop, but you can compensate by adding more ram.

So, for what you listed as the uses for this unit, it should do fine, just get an additional 256MB to compensate. If you will be using it to play the current DirectX 9.0 games, DON'T get it, it's not gonna work well.

Here's a link to Aussie1's recent experience with Toshiba's Warranty service:
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1706

Good Luck!

-Vb-