Toshiba R700 / R705 /R630 Owners Thread

Question about mouse buttons:
I'm thinking about buying an r705 and recently checked it out at BB. Loved what I saw, but the mouse buttons seemed very firm -- had to give them a good push rather than the soft, smooth touch required on my current laptop. Plus they made a noticable click sound. Is this your experience, or is it likely that the demo at the store has been hammered upon too much?
Thanks for your help.

 

no, that's how they work

 

on mine the loudness depends on where on the button you press. on the right button, the lower right corner is very quiet. the rest is pretty loud. on the left button, the left lower part makes this annoying squeaky loud sound the rest is just normal loud. If that squeaky sound gets any worse i may have to send it in for warranty.

 

i want to buy the r705-41 but wanted to add a grphics card like the nvidia geforce gt330m is this possible? and f so where can i buy the card? would this significantly effect the battery and what 9 cell could i buy? is there a better fan also thats quiter for upgrade

 

Got mine the other day from the US and although the buttons are clicky, I have developed a habit of tapping the touchpad area to initiate a left click and so don't use the buttons as much, but mine are loud and clicky as you mention. The bottom left and right corners of the touchpad have been set up in the synaptics driver utility to allow me to middle click, these could be easily changed to right click if required

 

Hi guys, Im going to put a second hard drive in. I currently have a 128 ssd. Im going to add a 640 in place of the optical drive. Any suggestions on a second hard drive mount?

 

have u tried removing optical first? coz it says its a usb-dvd. Not sure what kind of connector it uses.

 

I have an R705 with an i5-460m.
On balanced power scheme, plugged into the mains, the CPU-z readout flicks between 2793Mhz and 1330Mhz.

If I put the laptop on High Performance it locks into 2793Mhz.

Could it be down to something to do with your power options? The above figures are from when the laptop is sitting idle at the desktop with nothing other than CPU-Z running.

 

I was thinking about buying a Satellite M665 or a Vaio S-Series, but in the end, the R-705-P35 emerged as the winner and I bought one last Monday in Best Buy. So far, I'm very happy with this nice little laptop. I had a 17" HP Pavilion behemoth (which was riddled with problems) and finally having something this light is a pleasure. The keyboard is great and so is the display, and I love the sturdy build. I even find the noisy click from the touchpad buttons to be satisfying (despite the annoyance posed to bystanders, heh). If only the speakers were a bit better, I would say this is indeed the perfect laptop for what it's meant for.

I've had no problems with noise coming from the fan. I can hear it only if it's completely silent around, and even then, it's not that annoying. I have tinnitus, so in any case, I'm used to persistent and annoying high-pitched sounds

There are two areas, however, which I am a bit concerned about. The first of them is heat. Sometimes it runs hot enough so that using it on your lap is mildly uncomfortable. Frequent overheating was one of the reasons behind the demise of my previous laptop and it would be terrible if, in a couple of years after the heat transfer coefficient goes down, this laptop comes up with the same problem.

The other thing that has me thinking is the battery. Not the fact that the battery life is far off the advertised 8-hour mark. I'm satisfied with the actual battery life. Or that charging is [supposedly] slow. I can also live with that.

But... I'm just a bit disturbed by the 8.5% battery wear reported by BatteryBar. I thought it was caused by me running the laptop mostly on battery power (thus burning a few cycles already) during this week, but I was still very surprised that it had advanced that far so fast. But then, reading the forum, it seems it's a recurrent issue.

Any explanation to the 8.5% battery wear? Why would a new battery show such wear already? Have any of you heard back from Toshiba about this issue?

Greetings to everyone!

 

my battery shows that 8% too but it's not going worse

 

I like what I saw today in person at BB, but two things are a bit turn off. I am coming from a Vaio TT which has an anti-glare display and love it. Plus, it has good viewing angels. Does the non BB/R700 models come with a matte display option? The other thing, not as big as the first, but do we have an idea when it will be upgrade to SB, and/or gets USB 3.0? Thank you.

 

Sandy Bridge is in the works....
Portege R830

I'll guess it'll be a spring/summer release, about a year after the 700/705 came out.

 

Hi, new r705 owner...

I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this: has anyone successfully swapped the optical drive for a 2nd hdd?

 

Do we have any info if the business models with include usb 3.0? I really like the look, feel, and what I am told good build, but really its the screen that turns me off coming from my TT(but the nice thing is it gets about the same battery life from better specs). And I do a good bit of photo work.

 

It looks there are more than one type of optical drive connection used in R700 series. Mine is standard Slim SATA, so piece of cake to replace by 2nd hdd. But in some previous post there is some kind of strange connector.

USB 3.0 is part of docking station. I think all business models have matte screen and I've seen some offers of consumer version, called R630 in here, with matte LCD.

 

Is the matte screen any good(or should I say better than the glossy screen)?

 

Thanks for the reply....

Which model do you have? And if you swapped yours, is there a specific caddy you used?

 

I have R700-17G - details here. I'm still waiting for Intel 3rd generation SSD's.

 

I just got my Portege R700-ST1303 Laptop from Toshiba
and have changed out the 320 gig hard drive for a OCZ Vertex 2 240 gig and installed 8 gig of ram. I am happy with it and would like to know if the Logitech 470 bluetooth mouse would work ok.

 

Nice! what sort of boot up time do you get with those upgrades?

 

got my Logitech V470 bluetooth working right now...although I still haven't installed the software, but it all work. I just need the software to map the wheel button to Backspace for browser back..

 

I Think I going to get the V470 mouse, just wanted to know if they was any lagging problem.

 

I've had my R705 since early October, and I am very happy with it. At first I thought it was a bit noisy, but I think that has either gotten better or I have gotten used to it.

A few weeks ago installed 8 gigs of RAM, and now this thing is super fast. 100% better.


My next move might have to be getting a Solid State Hard Drive, but we'll see. I'm not made of money.

 

anyone know where to get a zif/lif to sata adaptor for the drives that come in the R700.
I have one but the ribbon is to wide and doesnt fit, i cant seem to find one that fits.

this is what i have

 

Hi,

Does anyone have a photo on the insides of a R700 with a 3G card in?

I'm wondering if its possible to add one to an R630.

Thanks

Matt

 

Hey guys,

I was thinking about getting the R705. I watch a lot of HD video. Can she handle it ok?

Thanks

 

If you have a an ultra portable laptop then you might as well get an ultra portable mouse like this one. it is housed and charged by the expresscard and you hardly notice its there.

it can handle 720p videos w/o a problem but it struggles at times with 1080p online and offline.

 

Thanks. That's what I was thinking. Most my stuff is 720p so that works. I'll add this to my "list"

 

1080p works fine for me, just make sure hardware acceleration (DXVA/vdpau) is enabled in the player you're using. Media Player Classic Home Cinema works great.

 

1080p with no problems here (offline or online from youtube)

 

Anyone working on 3 displays at the same time? HDMI + VGA + internal LCD? I was looking for that setup in Windows & Toshiba options but witho no luck. It seems to me that this is not supported by drivers but maybe I'm mistaken.

 

So toshiba send me an email to upgrade to 8GB of ram with one 4GB card. So I open my computer, but I have two 2GB cards. So am I missing something....

 

I used the Crucial.com memory advisor tool which told me my R705-P41 had 2 2GB sticks of RAM. Pulled these out for 2x4GB. I think Toshiba have made a booboo in their reply to you!



I finally went for the SSD upgrade and put the Crucial C300 256GB drive. Power on times to a usable Windows 7 were just above 40 seconds prior and are now down to 20 seconds on power and 25 on battery. I suppose it could be optimised more by chopping and changing services but I'm happy with this!

 

Actually you are right. I noticed i drop frames only when there is some process frozen in windows 7. Also the drivers are not optimized for Linux so 1080p as of now is not going to be smooth there.

BTW, I tried Media Player Classic Home Cinema and it has problems syncing audio with videos. how do you get around that?

 

it doesnt actually unless u have extra codecs installed which are interfering

 

gonna keep bumping this question till someone adventurous enough tries it

Anyone manage to install a 2nd hard drive in the optical bay?

 

My screen went wonky earlier this evening (loss of contrast, completely washed out). I had to restart the computer to fix it.

Is this a common problem? I have now turned off the Intel display power saving options. I just want to know if I will be seeing more of this (I can still return it).



[PS: I'm really enjoying the portability of this machine, but the display is marginal and the fan noise, while not loud, is ever-present. Still, for $750, nothing compares.]

 

It happens to me sometimes... but only for a few seconds

i'm sure thats software problem

 

I'm vaio TT owner as well and I just got a r700 s1312. Build quality is impressive. Screen is not bad at all, very bright and crisp. It has narrower viewing angles compared to tt but it hasn't been a problem. Battery life is actually better than TT. I was very suprised on that.

My bigest complain is the fan noise. Suckr is constantly running at 43%, even in idle It is not accaptable, especially after TT. Heat is not a problem during casual use but the fan is really noisy.

 

Had my R705-P35 for about 2 months now. I love the size and feel, but I have a few issues that I want to see if anyone else is having, and if they have any thoughts/ideas on resolving:

1. I get the display contrast washout, happens for about 10-15 seconds then goes back to normal. Seems to only happen when I'm on batteries. Not a huge concern, but obviously I hope they deal with it in a future driver update.

2. A bigger concern is the weird sound that I get a few times a day. It's a strange "crash" type sound, but it doesn't sound like a hard drive crash, and I've run Seatools and the drive comes back fine. It almost sounds recorded, but it's not coming from the speaker, as it happens even when muted, and it sounds like it's coming from the front of the machine. It seems to happen more often when I'm using the mouse buttons, but it happens randomly too. It doesn't seem to have any effect on performance, but it's worrisome, and it's got me flummoxed.

3. The fit of the power plug into the jack has become more and more loose. It hasn't had any effect on charging, but I'm worried that if it gets any looser then it will.

Thoughts anyone?

 

I only have the problem of the contrast... I think it's software

 

Same here. So far I heard about washed-out screen several times. Looks like it's common problem. I guess this is software issue (btw, not really happy about Toshiba's software quality). I my case it happens sometimes when I unplug AC power jack. Plugging it back resolves the problem for me (as well as system restart).

Yeah, after a 4 months of use I've spot that power jack gets more and more loose. I'm sure that this will eventually brake. It's kinda funny- they brand Toshiba as "leading innovation" but I can't see any innovation looking at the power plug. I've had Sony Vaio with bend power plug and it worked fine for 3 years. I'm not even comparing them to Apple's mag-safe power plug.

These are minor issues for me. What's annoying in everyday use is behavior of screen. When displaying something bright and then something darkish contrast gets changed and screen seems to get a little bit darker - I guess this is how works dynamic contrast. When change in display occurs I can observe tiny changes of contrast, step by step. I tried to turn it off but couldn't find any option related to that. God how this is irritating. Anyone experiencing same issue?

 

Has anyone here been able to successfully use the BIOS user or superuser password on their R700? if so, what version BIOS are you using?

 

I just found a solution to your last display problem.

right click on desktop, go to graphics properties. click power tab choose battery from pull down menu and disable power conservation features. This disable intels auto contrast / brightness feature.

 

Update: I have the service manual for the R700 series, and I thought to look at how the power jack is attached, in case I have to replace it. Turns out that the jack itself isn't soldered to the system board, actually the jack housing just fits into a slot in the case, and uses a wired harness to connect power to the system board. This means two things:

1. It's going to be super easy to replace.
2. It may be that the looseness I've noticed is actually just the movement of the jack in its slot in the case, rather than the fit of the plug into the jack.

Either way, it's good news.

Also, I failed to mention that I was having the green blotchy flash video problem. Turning off hardware acceleration fixed the issue, but I didn't like the idea of that as a permanent fix. I downloaded the latest generic Win 7 64-bit HD Graphics driver from Intel, and after fighting first the Intel installer, then Windows, I finally uninstalled the old driver and installed the new one. Problem solved. I don't know what features the Toshiba version of the driver provided, but I like being able to go directly to Intel and get the latest driver without having to wait for Toshiba. Does anyone know what features I lose using the generic driver?

Sam

 

I also the installed latest HD graphics and chipset drivers from Intel. So far no problems whatsoever. Actullay my windows rating improved for graphiscs a liitle bit. (4.5)

 

So far I'm quite satisfied with the R705-P35, however, I cannot help having somewhat of a bad feeling about the battery. First, the wildly overstated battery life (though after reading reviews I expected that). Then, the thing about BatteryBar reporting 8.5% of wear.

And now, my battery appears to drain power when the laptop is turned off. I just noticed this recently, but I don't know if it had always been happening. For example, between yesterday and today (after just about 20 hours), the battery went from fully charged to 95.6%. From what I've read, this is way too much drain from a battery that's almost new.

This is really problematic for me because I bought the laptop in the US, but I don't live there. So getting it serviced is quite inconvenient.

Have any of you had the same problem with battery drain? Any ideas of what might be causing it? It would be terrible if it's a short circuit in the motherboard or something like that.

 

You might want to settle down a little there. Nothing you have described is "service worthy".
When you turn your laptop on after 20 hrs, don't forget that it has to boot up before you get your 95.6% reading. This means you used up some while booting up.

A better test would be to let it sit for a few days. My guess is you'll still see something like your 95.6 number. If you do have additional degradation, then comparing that number to 95.6% (assuming that's repeatable) is a better indication of the losses you are getting from a combination of internal battery leakage (all batteries have some) as well as what the laptop is drawing when off (all laptops draw at least a tiny bit).

The 8.5% wear is an artifact of the wear measuring program. Don't forget that the whole concept of battery wear is a VERY inexact science. It is not at all like measuring how much gas is left in your car gas tank. It's more just a set of heuristics that folks have come up with that 'sort of' give you a weak measure of battery degradation. But don't think you are getting a 1% accurate number. It's at best more like a 10-20% number at best.

 

Oscar2, I see that you have both a Z and a R700. Which one do you like better ?Is fan noise levels comparable ? Is Z as rigid as r700 as far as build quality is concerned ? Btw just ignore the screen quality difference )

 

Yes they both have similar fans and fan noise. I know folks like to complain about both of them (with regards to noise). On my own, I probably would not have noticed the fan noise except that people, on the forums, kept pointing it out. For some it's a bigger deal.

Both are built well. I like a laptop I can take apart and both have that nice characteristic. The Sony is the easier to disassemble. But the Toshiba is much easier to replace the hard drive (and you can use standard drives).

I've had to take the Sony apart a couple of times to address the 'loose hinge' issue. I think that the last time I fixed it for good (I hope).

As far as rigidity goes, I feel like the Toshiba is a little more rigid. It's a teensy bit lighter and has a slightly larger display. It is also the better looking one (imho).

The Sony is the more powerful one given its solid state disks and nvidia gpu.

The Toshiba has a nice feature in that it can extend across two external monitors, On the Sony, only one external at a time.

The Sony is my main laptop.

Both also have had similar issues with freezing up, both were solved by updating of drivers.

Overall, I feel that both are pretty great laptops. I wouldn't trade either for any of my previous laptops.