Toshiba R200

Hello,

I am thinking about buying a Toshiba R200. I have some questions about it thought and if anyone that has it could help me it would be great [ ].

Can you use the fingerprint reader to authenticate at boot-up? (so no one can use the PC if he isn't allowed to).

Can you play Half Life 2 on it? I currently have a Fujitsu T3010D with 1.6 GHz Pentium M, 1024 RAM and 64 VRAM shared which works great with Counter Strike and the first Half Life, but at Half Life 2 it doesn't work too well (i think it's because of the VRAM), it loads well and the rest but in gameplay you move like you have a laggy internet connection (like moving in slow-motion).

Anyone has something to complain about it? Does the cooler makes any noise? My T3010D is very silent, the cooler works mostly only when i play games, but it works at high temperature (my hand get a little wet when typing).

Mainly I need the R200 for programming and some things that don't require much performance, only thing i would like to do is play Half Life 2 on it [8D]. The external cd drive doesn't bother me (i allready have one for my t3010d).

...

 

I'm thinking about getting this notebook too but very hard to get information about this one. Does that mean this model is not popular or not good to buy? any idea?

 

You may want to try checking out this link as it's more focused towards Tablet PC's.

http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/

-Vb-

 

thanks Venombite,

R200 is not a tablet PC. This one is an ultra light and ultra slim notebook! very few people talked about this model!

Toshiba Protege R200

 

Oops, sorry my bad. I thought it said M200. [ ]

But regarding the notebook, I'll see if I can answer a few of the questions.

1. I don't think you can use the Fingerprint reader to prevent a user from booting your system. It's used to authenticate the user to allow them to get into the OS and allow to decrypt the encrypted data. Below is a small description of how the fingerprint reader works on the Toshiba notebooks.

http://209.167.114.38/support/TechSupport/TSBs/ALL/-TSB001115.htm

You can, however, enable the BIOS power-on password and HDD "drive lock" type password that applies the systems password onto the HDD so that the correct password MUST be entered for the drive to be accessible. You can't just take the drive out and put it into another system as a slave drive to get access to the data.

2. I doubt this will play Half-Life 2 well. It uses the Intel GMA 900 video card, which uses shared video memory. These types of video cards (shared video) is only good for light gaming, not something graphics intensive like HL2. Something with dedicated graphics would be the better choice. Your Fujitsu performed poorly because it uses the Intel Extereme Graphics II video card. This too uses shared video memory. The new Intel GMA900 will perform better than your Fujitsu, but it still won't be on par with the better ATI or Nvidia video cards in the market.

3. I don't know of the noise content, but the smaller the unit, the warmer it will get. Since it's so thing, there really isn't much space to add a lot of cooling device (heatsinks/fans), so a lot of the heat is just absorbed through the casing. Your casing will generally be your heatsink to draw away the heat from your systemboard. This system uses Intel's Ultra Low Voltage CPU @ 1.2Ghz and usually the ULV CPU's don't have a fan, it's all passive cooling (the notebooks chassis dissipates the heat, so it'll feel warmer when typing).

4. I'd recommend getting a slightly larger notebook as it might fit your needs a bit better. You might want to take a look at the Portege S100. The LCD is slightly larger, but it has dedicated video memory which will be a much better match for Half-Life 2. It's more powerful and is slightly cheaper than the R200.

*** I would also recommend getting more notebook than you currently need. Getting what you just need at the moment will make the unit obsolete in no time since the technology will not be able to keep up with changing program/game requirements. Like I usually say, pay now or "PAY" later. [ ]

-Vb-

 

I finally got my Toshiba R200. It took me a long time to decide, but oh well... It is as thin as a magazine and very light. The fans work only from time to time and you don't evan notice them when they do, but still the chasis is colder then your hand. I'm really happy i bought this, the processor is faster then the t3010d evan if it is 1.2GHz and t3010d is 1.4GHz, at SuperPI the R200 did 2mins 28 seconds and the T3010D did 2 mins 47 seconds (at 2 million digits calculation). I really don't know where they put all the stuff in it because it is very small and very thin. The fingerprint reader you can use at boot but at the windows logon screen, it is really fast and u realy save time either then inputing passwords. Also very nice are the Toshiba utillities which help you do anything you want. For my programming needs it is great untill now , nothing bad to say about it. I will try installing HL2 on it tonight to see if that works.

 

congratulation Redswill! Glad to hear that you r happy with your R200.
I just order mine yesterday and now waiting for my R200 to come. i guess about a week from now. Cheers!

 

I installed Half-Life 2 and CS Source. CS Source works perfect, no problem with it. HL2 works great too but when you reach the loading point for chapter 2, the game exists to the main screen, not saying anything. I tried a lot of options but couldn't make it work. On the Intel 915GM page says HL2 is supported without any known issues, i'll look for a new driver and see if that works.

Lol i'm in Romania and got it next day delivery, in USA you can't find it? Weird...

 

I am looking at the Toshiba R100 and R200, I was also having bit of trouble finding info on it. There are a couple of magazine reviews, but no user reviews.

Can you give us a list of your specs. Processor, RAM...etc. How fast is it loading programs like Photoshop and MS Office and such? How does it handle mutli-tasking? Does the touchpad get in your way?

Is it quiet? Running HL2 and CS Source do the fans kick in?

What type of programing are you doing? Are you compiling on your machine or compiling on a server? I would be doing some programing on mine, but code would be compilied on a server, which would take some of the load off the laptop.

Thanks for the info!

 

MS Office and Photoshop i don't use so i can't tell and neither do multi-threading so i can't tell about them. The touchpad is great and it has a Fn+key hotkey to switch it on/off when you want. I'm programming perl and i have ActiveState Perl on windows xp and it doesn't need compiling, i only run the .pl file and done. As i said the 1.2GHz processor it has is faster then my previous 1.4GHz fujitsu t3010d. It's perfect for me

 

And about the HL2, yes the fans kick in at maximum but amazing is that the internal microphone it has still receives clear sound so it's great at counter-strike . Also about the fans, it has a power saver utillity which if you set the processor level to 8 (maximum), the fans will be working allmost all the time, i put it on auto and i don't see any performance lost and it is very quiet and not hot at all.

 

Did you alter any system settings to get cs:source to work as I have same graghics card and same chipset and it will not run it. Well it runs but its not playable.