Toshiba R700 / R705 /R630 Owners Thread

For those of you unaware, a new BIOS update (1.5) is now available.

 

Jamshil:

I'm beginning development of a USB autonomous anti-Seagull laser that you may be interested in.


Thanks RunSilent23 Sounds like a good update.

Version 1.50 - 2010-08-31

* Added support for a 2nd LCD Model (LG).
* Implemented an improvement for Fast Boot.
* Fixed: System may hang when an ExpressCard is connected.
* Provided an interface in BIOS Setup to select the NumLock status while booting up.
* Fixed: May take a long time to boot if a USB device (Black berry 9700) is connected to the system.
* Fixed: Booting a PCDOS GhostCD (v11.0.2) will cause a "Boot Failure" message.
* Optimized the condition when booting from a USB stick - addresses a USB stick boot issue when "USB-FDD Legacy Emulation" is enabled.
* Fixed: Audio skips when Eco mode is on during DVD Video playback in Windows Vista.
* EC-1.40: Modified: Phenomenon where the BIOS BootBlock does not update when the BIOS is updated.

 

what exactly is Fast Boot?

 

Hey,

so far I've seen nobody that was able to install a 2nd hdd caddy in the optical drive bay. Is that true?

Greetings

 

meboy, you do that and I will get a high capacity battery to power it. Next i'm gonna need me a usb-powerd beer ice box. are you up for the challenge?

 

Where have you seen anyone attempt to do this in order to conclude that they were "unable" to do this?

I don't believe toshiba sells a second hdd bay to replace the optical drive.
That's a pretty common omission for most notebooks though, especially for one of this size.

 

Thanks for the info - has anyone tried this yet? Any noticeable differences?

 

I just put it on mine and don't notice any difference right away.
I'm not having any issues with what the fixes were directed at.

Sometimes manufacturers will slip in other stuff that they don't list like screwing up the fan, etc.
Luckily I didn't notice anything like this.

An interesting side note is that I had to put it on a cd because I installed a fresh copy of win7 Ultimate and repartitioned the HDD deleting the recovery partition.
The run in win. BIOS updater and the eco utility don't run in win.
They give an error message saying the device is not recognised or something.

 

Interesting - thank you for the info.

 

Hey guys, how did you remove the hard drive compartment to upgrade? there is one little Phillips-head screw there that i removed and yet the lid wouldn't come off. so i didn't want to force it out.
BTW, the choice of unusually small screw head for those compartments seems very odd. I guess they don't want many people to do their own upgrades. One more revenue source for them.

 

Those are very typical electronics type screws. You just need a electronics screw driver kit. They usually come in a blue case.

You have to remove the memory panel (One screw). Then you can get at the second screw for the HDD panel.

I opened it up just to see what it looks like in there.
I think I'll be doing a little mod to add a heatsink to the CPU. It looks like it's totally bare in there. You can see it right beside the memory.
Maybe I'll make a little how to.

 

Thanks meboy! i'll give that a try.
I just looked at my old laptop and all the screws have the same head size. I guess the use of smaller head screws for easy to access compartments is a new trend.

that's interesting. keep us posted on your progress.


BTW guys here's why we can't (unless you have some serious modding skills) add an extra HD inside a caddy:

 

How big a heatsink do you think will fit? I haven't opened my R705 yet, but this thing feels so light, they must've packed everything in there pretty tight! Is there much room for anything else? And how would a heatsink affect the "AirFlow" design inside?

 

I measured the gap at about 25 x 25 x 9 mm (WxLxH).

I'm likely going to go with a high quality copper VGA heatsink.
The ones I found are 14 x 14 x 9 mm. which should leave enough room around it for lots of air flow.

When I do it, I'll take before and after temperature readings to see if it really did anything.
It should be a simply little mod and cost about $20 so it's worth a shot.

I wonder if this is the first notebook to not have a heatsink on the CPU.

 

I have a R700-1320. Has anyone tried to replace the Toshiba Bluetooth stack with the Windows stack? For tethering with my Blackberry Tour 9630 I use a program called "Tether" that only supports the Windows or WIDCOMM Bluetooth stacks.

By the way: pairing between laptop and phone works fine with the Toshiba stack. For example, I can send pictures from the phone to the computer with no problem. It's just that "Tether" doesn't recognize this Bluetooth stack.

 

I use RIM Desktop Manager 6 and a USB cable with my Bold to tether.
It's dead simple and free.

I tried to pair the Bold 9000 to my R700 for file transfers or to connect to Desktop Manager without success.
It was only coming up as a modem.
I haven't spent any time looking into a solution though.
This was with the Toshiba Bluetooth stack.

Let us know if you do any testing yourself.

 

I've just stated that there were no reports on anybody being able to install a 2nd hdd. I didn't "conclude" that they attempted it and were unable to do it. It was a question by the way.

 

Quick question for y'all. I just bought an Asus VW266h, in part on Oscar's recommendation, and tonight I connected it via VGA (I have an HDMI cable coming soon). For the first couple of hours the monitor was connected but it was essentially just showing the laptop's resolution. In the control panel the display resolution wouldn't go higher than 1366x768.

Then at some point, miraculously, everything changed and I was able to see the Asus monitor in the Control Panel Display feature. It was set to 1900x1200, and everything looked a million times better. Text much sharper, colors better, whammo.

The problem is that I don't know what I did to make the switch. Can anyone fill me in so I know what to do if I run into that problem again?

 

When you first plugged it in, you may have been seeing the same image on both monitors, in which case it chooses a compromise between the two. At some point you may have turned off the laptop display by any one of a number of means (closing the laptop or typing the "windows key - P" followed by a selection or changing display settings...), at which point only the external monitor was displaying (and so things improved dramatically).

Best bet is to choose "Extend", if you want both laptop and external monitor on, and set the external as the main monitor (in display settings). Or else choose external only (if you don't need the laptop display on)

Hitting "Windows key -P" and choosing to Connect/Disconnect/Extend projector is the easiest way to control what you see.

 

Beautiful. Thank you. And thanks for the monitor recommendation as well. I got it for $230 after rebates and it's a pretty incredible value as long as it holds up.

 

Is there ample space for a 12.5mm hard drive? I want to have the option to add a 1 TB hard drive should I buy this laptop.

 

@freemanzhu and @pubmsu:
As long as you encounter this issue only on battery power, then this is a problem with Intel's display power management. Right-click the desktop and select "Graphics Properties..." Select power on the left-hand column of the Intel settings window, then click "On Battery" on the Graphics Power Plan Settings drop-down menu.

Display Power Savings Technology is checked off and enabled by default. Whatever mumbo-jumbo they use, it robs the screen of brightness, sharpness, saturation, and gamma. Thanks, Intel! You can keep the box checked, but move the slider underneath to Maximum Performance, instead of Maximum Battery, and it won't affect image fidelity.

 

pff1029, thanks, but I experienced the issue most of the times even when plugged-in.

 

Hello Guys!

About two weeks ago I've got my R700 (R700 15Q to be more precise) therefore, I thought I will bring some of thoughts about this machine.

I will start from it's drawbacks:

Keyboard

This is probably the worst laptop keyboard I have owned. My previous two laptops (Sony Vaio FZ and Lenovo ThinkPad T400) had way better keyboards. I am aware that I cannot compare ThinkPad keyboard with this one (different type) but my girlfriend has Sony Vaio S and the keyboard is by far better than this on Toshiba.
It's just too mushy and unresponsive. As well as the built quality of the keyboard is not as good as the rest of this laptop. It seems that it came from another laptop.

Oh and almost forgot, there are not dedicated volume control buttons!

Fan Noise

It's definitely the loudest laptop I've used but than taking into consideration it's size and thickness it's understandable.
PS. Most of the time I am using ECO or Balanced mode.

Positive

Thin and Light
It feels like you are holding an Asus eepc. 1.28KG compared to my gf's sony vaio s 2kg.
The main reason actually I have purchased this laptop it was it's size and weight. I will be going to uni this year and will be carrying laptop most of my time.

Looks

From my point of view this is one of the most beautiful laptops currently on the market. As it is business orientated laptop, it has very elegant and discrete appearance (I don't mind chrome hinges).

Battery Life

So far I am pretty happy with it's battery life. With Eco mode on and with light web browsing, listening some music, I am getting somewhere between 4-5 hours.
I remember that someone has complained about the charging times? Well, I have no issues whatsoever. From my observation, I have not noticed any significant difference compared to my T400.


Overall

I have decided to keep this laptop. Even though at first few days I was thinking about returning it, mainly because of the keyboard and fan noise.
If just Toshiba used a better quality keyboard I would have a close to perfect notebook.

 

You need to install "Value Package" to get your bios recognised

 

What's the "Value Package"?

 

It's actually called "Value Added Package". You can download it from Toshiba website.

 

Thanks for the info.

How did you figure that out?
It doesn't say anything about what it is on Toshiba.

I don't think I'll install it though. I don't need those few programs.

 

Well the only reason I have installed it was to get bios updated and Eco on it. Later I have removed it

 

the value added package also installs the OSD

 

"OSD"? Is that like an on screen display for the function keys or something?

 

OSD = On Screen Display. So when you press the "Fn" key, it overlays on the top of the screen, what each F-key would do. Kinda handy.

btw, Fn-Tab turns off the dvd drive...

 

Thanks for the info on that.

I'll install it and if there's no bloat or background processes added with it I'll leave it there.

 

Speaking of on-screen display, I really love Toshiba's Fn-button OSD overlay. But is there anyway to get a display overlay when you change volume? All my previous laptops would show the volume bars changing in real-time, or at least give an audible notification that volume had changed. But for the R705, everytime I change the volume, I have to click the Windows audio task bar icon to double-check whether volume had actually changed. Does anybody have any tips?

 

Does anyone here have the Canadian version (the Tecra r700)? I can get the US version as well, but it's just much easier getting the Tecra and I was wondering if:

1) The different processors. Does the i5 430m really differ that much from the 520?

2) The possible deal breaker, the bilingual keyboard. I have not found any pictures of the Tecra and I was hoping someone who has one can post a picture of the keyboard. I much prefer the US english keyboard but if the bilingual keyboard isn't that different, I'm willing to give it a shot.

Thanks alot guys.

 

I wonder if anyone can help me? I'm having trouble getting the HDMI output to work correctly. I plug into my monitor, set to use use external monitor only and set the resolution to the monitor's native resolution of 1920x1080 (60hz) but all 4 sides of the display are cut off and it is fuzzy. Someone else reports the same problem here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/toshiba/493524-portege-r700-thin-light-13-3-a-45.html#post6468667. Any ideas?

Thanks
Tom

Edit: Forgot to mention, not sure if it makes any difference but this is on the UK model R630-13F

 

im in canada and i spent extra to get the us version only becoz of the bilingual kb, i havent seen r700 with bilingual kb but i went to bestbuy and saw some similar layout kb and it became the deal breaker

 

I installed the Value Added Package.

I like the Flashcards but I disabled Powersaver, Password Protection and Smoothview. So only the Flashcards process runs.
I won't be using those and I don't need those three processes running in the background all the time.

 

There appears to be no volume OSD for FN keys.
Weird that there is for brightness and not volume.

Other notebooks of mine have also had this. Maybe they'll update the application to include it.

 

I just tested it hooked up to my TV through HDMI.

I used FN>F5 to select HDMI output only and it displayed a perfect 1920x1080

When it went to the default (LCD and HDMI) upon plugging it in it was shown in a centered area of the TV but no blurring or anything.

I didn't play with the other F5 options or windows screen resolution options to try and get what you might be seeing.

I wonder if it's actually TV related. Different TV's handle inputs very differently.

 

I have the the Candian version, the bilingual keyboard is fine. I posted a couple of pictures on the original thread for the Toshiba R700.

 

try an application called 3RVX to get an on screen volume control. It's not perfect, but it does a fairly decent job.

 

If you have had blurring and overscan with HDMI out, the culprit is most likely the TV, but Intel's settings can alleviate some of those problems, including overscan (if applied to the picture before going out to the TV). I would suggest that all sharpening and contrast boost settings should be turned completely off on the TV and sharpening should be turned off on the Intel settings for external video. High contrast kills a lot of detail, as well; knock it down a few notches on the PC, then check the difference on your TV. Finally, check for a 0% overscan aspect mode on your TV. As long as a clean image on your PC is output at the TV's native resolution without overscan and with any superfluous adjustments turned off, the picture should look fine.

However, I have a problem with my Vizio LCD panel when outputting at native res, 1366x768. I get weird purple and green edges on contours and sharpness takes quite a hit, even when I do exactly as I suggested above (which was done on an admittedly much higher-class Samsung LED edge-lit panel). I can get a much sharper picture when viewing on the TV at 1280x720, but I can't get rid of really bad overscan above and below. Has anyone seen this problem and fixed it?

 

Whoops everyone is assuming I'm talking about a TV. It's a monitor (HP 2159m), so there aren't many settings on it. I have another computer plugged in to it via DVI and that works fine without any tweaking. Regarding the Toshiba I can get the whole image to show by opening the Intel Graphics Control Panel and changing horizontal and vertical scaling to 50. However it still looks blurry. When I say blurry it looks like what you usually get when you select a non-native resolution.

 

Are you using FN>F5 to specify HDMI output only? Or something else?

I wouldn't mess with the Intel settings yet. Reset those to defaults.

 

What does Fn + F5 do differently that Win + P doesn't?

 

I thought there was more than four options when I had it plugged in but maybe not.
Still, we don't know what he choose at all.

Have you tried the Toshiba through DVI?

 

Just purchased a R700-S1321 that comes w/4MB RAM and a 320GB HDD. Couple of questions?
1) Should I install the 32-bit Windows or 64-bit? Which will boot faster and run apps faster?
2) If I go with with the 64-bit, I want to upgrade to 8MB of Ram. Can someone tell me what the best, fastest RAM is for this laptop?
3) I have a Intel X25-M Mainstream (SSDSA2MH080G2R5) 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD). Will this fit to replace the HDD?
Thanks in advance, A

 

Hello

I am considering to buy an R630. I am now unsure weather the fan is loud or not.

Thanks for your replays

Davoud

 

The fan is rarely loud for me, but the occasional, high-pitched whine is definitely annoying. Is the general consensus that there's no solution for that issue (other than the one that supposedly diminishes battery life)?

Others have found the fan to be louder than I have. But I don't do any gaming or many intensive activities, which is probably why it's usually pretty quiet for me.