Toshiba Satellite A75-S226 too good to be true?!

I've been looking all over the place for a review of this new A75 system. I mean, honestly for the price of 1599 you get all this:

Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Pentium 4
RAM: 512MB (1DIMM) fixed PC2700 memory module
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
Special Features: Hyper-Threading Technology
Video: ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP with 64 MB of shared video memory
Display: 15.4 inch 1280 by 800
HD: 60 gig
"SuperMulti" drive DVD/CDRW/DVDRW !?
Wireless Lan/fire wire/usb 2/ etc

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=HHO&coid=-27931&sel=0&rcid=-26367&ccid=1291021

Has anyone checked out this system by any chance? Is the shared video a huge problem? (toshiba seems to intergrated this to all A75s). An indepth review of this system at this site will be great. Otherwise this looks like really decent notebook.

 

Great CPU but horrible Video for gaming or any other heavy media requirements. The ATI 9000 IGP shared graphics is your bottleneck. Go to www.powernotebooks.com or www.pctorque.com and you can get a better notebook with the same price. This A75 System is not a great deal IMO.[|)]

 

Thxs prisonmate, opened my eyes a little bit more about the notebook industry[ ]

 

For that 50 bucks less, you can get an HP with those EXACT same specs and get the Mobility Radeon 9600 with 128 MB dedicated memory. That Toshiba's not a very good deal.

--------------------
Compaq Presario 2800T
Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz - 15" UXGA
512 MB RAM - 40 GB (5400 rpm)
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB
Pretty good for 2002 isn't it?

 

For $200 bucks less (with mail-in rebate), you can get an eMachines M6809 with a mobile Athlon 64 3200+ and an ATI MR 9600 w/ 64 MB VRAM. Toshiba makes some good systems (especially the P25), but this is not one of them.

 

What if it had a 2.8 ghz processor and no dvd burner but only cost $1250? Seems like a good deal to me.... but I don't really know much.

 

I don't know what Eliwood is smoking, there is no HP in that price range. The Toshiba is $1349. after rebate, identically configured with a 64 meg vid card, the HP is $1548.00, after rebate and +50 more if you want the 128 vid card. You also have to take into account that you have to pay more to get HP not to stick you with two 256meg memory sticks, and put in one 512meg and leave you an open slot.

Then you have to decide, who's mobile engineering do you trust more?

Toshiba, long the leader and innovator in the field...or HP.

I'd love to love HP, and there is a lot of good to say about them, but when it comes to a final analysis, video card aside, Toshiba wins hands down. Better engineering record, better price by several hundred dollars?

I have had in this order, laptops by Zenith (1986), Toshiba, Compaq, IBM, HP, Toshiba, Sony, Toshiba and my next one will probably be a Toshiba. My gaming needs are almost nil. At one point I managed a staff with 9 Toshibas, 4 IMB's and 15 HP's. While the HP's were reliable, they were perfomance dogs. Toshiba's service was amazing on two of their units that were problematic. They replaced low end machines, not with refurbs, but with brand new units, in month 11 of warranty.

The Toshiba model in question here, the A75-S226 has gotten rave reviews from most who've purchased it.

It is clearly the best value on the market. It hits a sweet spot in dollar to technology value (with peformance) that every consumer should be looking for.

The only negative I've read, is a typical one if you get a bum machine, or hard drive -- noisy hard drive or fan. The majority opinion is that it runs quiet.

If I don't lust for a 128meg card, I buy the Toshiba and save 200.,plus the tax on it Every time.

 

News on this unit...unadvertised sale!

I was in BestBuy, after returning an A75-S206 which kept having a battery drain problem (25% overnight when the unit was Off). Anyhow, the unit (A-75-S226)was on sale for $1149.99, which is what the price of the S206 would have been AFTER rebates, and this is the upgraded model, with the DVD writer and the extra ports (firewire) and cardreader. So I bought it (hoping the battery situation was a fluke). Well it printes out with a rebate for $150.00! So final cost will be approx. $1000.00, not including tax. Now the unit is showing on the website for $1349.99, but the store has it listed for 1149.99, which matches the Circuit City price. No wonder it was sold out except for 1 store in town. So at 1K, I think it is a great bargain! My only concern is short battery life, so I have not opened it yet. I am going to price a Dell Centrino unit just to compare. I will let you all know what the result is.

DarrenK

 

DarrenK,

With a P4 system, good battery life should never be expected. If you want battery life, go with a Pentium M (Centrino) based unit, or at the least, get a unit with an AMD64 low-powered CPU. That's one of the reasons why the unit is that inexpensive, P4 units cost much less than Pentium M's.

-Vb-

 

I bought one of these last week at Best Buy (the A75 S226) and I am VERY pleased with it. It was on sale for $1299 and I received 2 rebate forms for a $200 and $150 rebate so final price is $949. I was concerned about the graphics card only being 64mb but was able to change it to 128 once I got home and started tweeking it. I work with 3dMax (a major memory hog that didn't run well on my IBM)and it really flies on this computer and the screen is crystal clear. I would recommend this computer to anyone. With a bit of tweaking, it's great[ ]

 

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

 

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

The only issue with jumping up the video memory to 128MB (Shared Video Memory), is that the system memory drops by the ammount you just increased to the video. The video memory on the system is shared with the system memory, the more you allocate to video, the less you have for system (apps). If you only have 512MB in the system, jumping video to 128MB only leaves 384MB usable for apps. I'd suggest getting an extra 256MB or 512MB so that you have enough system ram for your apps.

-Vb-
<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>

I added an additional 512 of ram and it's really flying. That gives me 896 or so avaiable for apps. If this system had a separate video card it would have been ideal. I was on a very tight budget, however,and this was just too good to pass up. I've had it 10 days now, and so far 3dmax hasn't locked up a single time (it was a daily occurance on my IBM R-40). Neither have any of my other multimedia programs (Photoshop,Director,Flash etc). An extreme gamer might want to look elsewhere for a system, but so far for me, it's been running flawlessly, even before I added the additional ram.
Teresa [:I]

 

hey I just want to know whether the company has any plans of upgrading its graphics drivers. if you look ar this page http://www.megagames.com/news/html/software/atisaysyestooverclocking.shtml you will notice that the upgrade helps to boost the graphics card but the company does not have any upgrade on its drivers.

What do you think about that?

 

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