Toshiba M40 Battery Life? still worth it?

I just purchased a toshiba M40.. I'm extremely impressed with the quality of the screen, games look better on this notebook than on my home dedicated PC.. I find the battery life to be horrible. Just as a test.. I tried to watch a DVD movie and from a full charge it wasn't even able to finish the movie before hibernating.. This was with the wireless off. I use this notebook for presentations which are usually an hour, but often extend to 90-120 minutes based on the amount of demonstration and questions asked.. I never plug in my older HP notebook, and the battery lasts 2.5 + hours.

This is centrino and Toshiba states up to 3.2 hours. I also called tech support at toshiba, and they told me that it should be lasting 3 hours even with the wireless on.

My question is.. does every M40 exhibit this problem, and if so.. is it worth keeping the unit, or should I consider getting an HP 5450 or something?

I would prefer to have a lighter notebook.. I would prefer to have 64 MB minimum graphics with either an ATI or nvidia chipset.. DVD burner, nice widescreen, media reader slots, and Firewire.

I had so many problems with previous A70's I'm reluctant to switch this to an A70-ML1

I still have 10 days to return this M40.. I just don't know what to do, because other than the battery life, I really do like this notebook.

 

Start--->Control Panel--->Toshiba Power Saver

Set profile to Presentation, or just tone down the CPU frequency and try it again.

 

I am also curious in regards to the battery life as I am too considering this laptop. Also curious about the other reported problems encountered in this forum by other M40 owners.

 

It's true that this laptop's battery life is mediocre, for a Centrino at least. I have it and it sucks, but compared to the rest of the package, it was not enough to refrain me from buying it.

I think I can get around 100+ minutes watching movies from the hard disk with reasonable screen brightness. Doing really really really light work and using the max life setting, I guess it,s possible to get 3 hours, but that's it.

If you really want it (like I do) and want the battery life too, go for it and buy the 12-cell (double-capacity) battery from toshiba and you'll get a solid 4 hours, and up to 5 hours of light work (like a powerpoint presentation).

Oh, just like that, I noticed that the big power sucker in this laptop seems to be the screen, because if you keep it running with the lid closed, the battery barely gets drained at all. I may be wrong, but that's the impression I have.

Toshiba Satellite M40 - Pentium-M Sonoma 1.6ghz - 512mb DDR333 - 60gb 4200rpm - GeForce 6600 128mb - 15.4" BrightView WXGA TFT LCD

 

heavenly....have you experienced any other problems with your M40 as others have ?

 

What kind of problems?

Well, my first unit was defective, so I can't base my judgment on it. Now my replacement works great.

About the squealing noise, I can't tell if my new unit does it, I didn,t hear it since, but as I said in the other post, I set my CPU speed to dynamic, so the noise is pretty non-existent in this case.

Someone said that it had problems when disconnecting the AC and getting corrupted data, I don't have this problem, I plug and unplug regularly without troubles.

I had one problem, that others didn't report. When using the original installation of Windows (the one that comes preloaded), there is something that causes stability problems, but I can't pinpoint exactly which piece of software. My guts tell me it has to do with the ConfigFree application, but it's pretty useless to my taste. Ok, as I said, with the origial software, I once had a blue screen out of nowhere (while turning on my wireless router actually), I had 2 occasions where the computer was completely frozen when leaving it lid-closed for a while and coming back to it. But these issues, I didn't have them at all with a clean Windows install using only the critical components. It's dead stable ever since, running for many days without a reboot. I installed all device drivers and all the critical toshiba components including the power saver utility (which I suspected at first, but I don't have any problem with it now), and it works like a charm.

Hmmm... is there anything else to say... The Windows License Sticker underneath the unit is at an annoying position where it'll get very damaged in a while, hehehehe Hmmm... the touchpad works great, but if you are a fanatic, you might find that it has a weird "landscape", by that I mean that it isn't perfectly flat, it has like very subtle bumps. I know it, it annoys me at times But these are very minor gripes. Oh yeah, and it's not a defect either, but the whole unit is like made of plastic, and it flexes a little, so I feel I must be very careful when handling and moving it. For me it's not a problem, as I use it only indoors, almost like a desktop computer, but for someone always on the road, it's a think-about-it.

If you have a particular question about it, I'll be around.

Toshiba Satellite M40 - Pentium-M Sonoma 1.6ghz - 512mb DDR333 - 60gb 4200rpm - GeForce 6600 128mb - 15.4" BrightView WXGA TFT LCD

 

How do you use the "Express MEdia PLayer" mode
where it plays DVDs without booting into windows?

 

BTW...I had my M40 for 2 days and I absolutely LOVE this laptop!!!

I'm going to use it over my desktop computer now along with my 22" Monitor and the 200 GIG HD.

If I were you, I'd keep the laptop and buy another battery because the laptop itself offers AMAZING value! I looked long and hard before I picked this one up. It is not overly heavy, fairly well built, fast enough for everything I use it for. It has one of the best screens, and the video card is kicka$$....

Keep it man....

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by puppydg68

 

Glad to hear your satisfied.

 

Puppydg68,

When playing DVD's with your DVD drive, don't expect "amazing" battery life. The manufacturers advertise 3.2 hours of battery life, but that's not for watching movies. It's for basic usage with power management settings dropped and screen brightness lowered. The optical drives do consume a lot of battery power, so this should be expected. Try running the same movie from your hard drive and I can guarantee your system will run longer. You still have to anable the power management options (don't set to Always On) and also have to drop the brightness of your screen a bit.

-Vb-

 

If i werent wrong isnt their the 12cells battery that is double the power from bfo? Shouldnt u consider buying that?

 

I also install a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro, but I can't install the nVidia GeForce Go 6600 graphic driver. Can you tell me where do you get this driver from. I download one from Tecra M3 from US Toshiba webside. When I install it, it said I don't have such hardware, and terminate the installation. Now the VGA driver is in !, and not installed.

My model is M40-YP3

 

here's the video driver for the M40.

http://209.167.114.38/support/Download/files_downloads/psm40c/SM40BXDP.exe


you should only use drivers provided specifically for your laptop by Toshiba. I don't think you can use nVidia forceware drivers either.

~

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that is has never tried to contact us.