Joeb’s Blog…Thing

Gaming

Sorry for the delay between the last part and this part - I was ill, and GTA IV was released

So anyway, I have no screenshots, as the laptop has been formatted in order for it’s return later today. However I can say that apart from the very latest games, such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) etc. This laptop managed to run everything on full settings.

The games I tried out on the laptop (albeit briefly tried) were:

• The Sims 2 (incl. Nightlife)
• Command & Conquer 3 Kane Edition
• CoD4
• Black & White 2
• Half Life 2/Counterstrike Source
• Unreal Tournament 2004

For a little run down of the games and how they looked and performed, click below

More Detail!

HD DVD Playback

As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, the Qosmio has a HD DVD-R Drive Now as I have a few HD-DVD’s, I figured I would try this out. Especially given that it also sports a Full 1080p HD Screen!

So I popped in the HD DVD (The Matrix if you must know) and the HD DVD player launched. I have to admit, this slowed the system down a little, and changed the theme to Windows Vista basic, however I expected this, as playing HD content requires a lot of processing power.

I should also mention that if I paused the movie, and minimised the player window, I was able to do other things (i.e. yesterday I was torrenting the new Ubuntu 8.04 release all day).

So, overall, combined with the killer audio system, the HD DVD playback was brilliant, the images were sharp, black’s were very dark etc. I think the sharpness of the image was helped a little by the small 17″ screen - It’s small when you consider I watch HD movies on a 37″ screen usually - however I can’t really say much more than this, other than the playback was flawless So I’ve attached some screenshots, though I don’t know how good the image quality will be, I know it won’t do justice to the HD images

See the Pictures

Ubuntu Linux

Yes that’s right, I managed to get Ubuntu installed on this machine. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) as it was at the Release Candidate (RC) stage when I tried it.

It all runs perfectly smoothly. I had to change the boot options on the installation CD, due to the Nvidia graphics card, which needed a proprietary driver. This was the most painful part of the installation, as on a screen with a native resolution of 1920×1200, I had to run at 800×600 :’(

After that it was all smooth sailing, I compiled a few apps, and used it as I would my own. Everything worked just fine, I was impressed that the volume control (the disc “thing” on the left of the keyboard) even worked! Sadly the touch buttons didn’t work, but I expected this, as I know they’re controlled by software and not hardware.

I didn’t manage to get the fingerpint reader to work either, which I wasn’t too fussed about, but it would’ve been nice. Overall I was impressed with the Linux experience I had with the Qosmio. The battery life didn’t differ from Windows, though it doesn’t on my own laptop either.

So overall, the Qosmio does actually work pretty well with Ubuntu in my experience, I wasn’t expecting much because Toshiba laptop can be notoriously difficult to get working properly (just read through some of the threads in the UbuntuForums ;)).

There are also some pictures of the qosmio running Ubuntu if you would like to take a look :

See The Pictures

This part has been split into 4 subsections (a,b,c,d) to cover the following topics:

Windows, Ubuntu Linux, HD DVD & Gaming, so that said, onto -

Performance: Windows Vista

For those of you who have used Windows Vista: The Windows Experience Index tells me that the laptop scores a respectable 4.6 rating.

I’ve noticed that occasionaly, the laptop will boot fine, I’ll log in, and then it will take a good 3-4 minutes to load up everything before I can start using it. Other times it’s <1 minute, but on average, I would say between 1-2 minutes.

Obviously this gets quite annoying. I don’t even have many programs loading on startup, I turned off most of the Toshiba apps, I didn’t need them. All that starts is Windows Live Messenger, AVG Anti-Virus, Daemon Tools Lite, and that’s it (that I’ve added anyway). Having said that however, after the initial pain of waiting for it to load, it runs pretty quick, and is generally very snappy and responsive, even with Aero enabled

Overall I’m pretty impressed with the responsiveness on Windows, I’ve been running a Game (full screen, high settings - and I’m not saying what game yet) and minimised it to check some stuff on the net, and ended up writing a document in OpenOffice.org Writer, and there was no noticeable lack in performance.

1 Gripe I had however, is that the battery life is pretty average (verging on poor). Though I realise that the size and components in this laptop scream “my battery life is rubbish”, and I expected this, it does have 1 issue:
The battery lasts around 1 hour 30 minutes - 2 hours 10 minutes with full screen brightness (it depends on the activities), which I find I have to have, because dimming the screen makes it very difficult to read.

That aside, I’m pretty pleased with the performance when running Windows Vista on the laptop.

Bundled Software

As I’m sure nearly everybody who has bought a new computer, has had the torture of preinstalled (a.k.a bundled) software. Most of us will remove it, as they’re usually 30, 60 or 90 day trials of some program you probably won’t need.

Some of the worst in my experiences are:

1. AOL, it is truly terrible, though I’ve not seen it for a few years now
2. McAfee/Norton, if I want anti-virus, then I will get Anti-Virus!! [Note - I use AVG Free for my Windows machines, it works perfectly well, at no cost!]
3. Manufacturer software (I’ve noticed HP have a lot of software coming on their laptops still:()

So, with a brief history of that, here comes the details of the bundled software on the Qosmio G40 I received:

• Loads of Toshiba Apps
• Norton Internet Security 2008 Trial (90 days)

Now as I stated above, I don’t really like preinstalled software…I can cope with the manufacturer applications, in fact, they actually seem pretty useful on this laptop, as they include an HD DVD player, which for some odd reason, wouldn’t work unless I opened the app then inserted the HD DVD, more on this in a later part. Also included was the Fingerprint reading software, which allows me to log-on (and more!) using a Fingerprint, which is pretty cool.

And Norton…well…I make it no secret that I dislike Norton software, I think it slows the system down after a while, so the first thing I did (after installing Firefox) was uninstall it, re-enable the Windows firewall, and then download and install AVG Free.

That’s really all the software that came bundled with it…a couple of useful ones included to (I noticed Adobe Acrobat Reader was already installed). So that was quite good to see, I’m glad manufacturers are cutting down on the amount of software preinstalled.

Update: I have to say that I did in fact forget the most important piece of bundled software. The laptop came with Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate Though annoyingly I had to go through the process of installing all the updates

First off, let me start by saying, I have absolutely NO idea exactly how many parts this review will have, but anyway, onto the first part!

System Specs

Ok, so from what I can gather, the laptop has the following:

• 2x 200GB Hard Drives
• Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 (2.40GHz)
• 2GB RAM
• Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT (512Mb w/HDMI out)
• HD DVD-R Drive (i.e. can write HD DVD’s)*
• Intel Wifi 4965
• Harman/Kardon speaker system**
• Bluetooth 2.0
• 17″ Full 1080p HD Screen (actual resolution 1920×1200)
• Array of Touch-Sensitive Buttons
• Fingerprint Reader (I use this to log onto the PC, I think it’s awesome :p, it must be the big kid in me!)
• TV Tuner
• 2.0 Megapixel Built-in Webcam

*I do have an HD-DVD player, so I’ve tried this briefly. Though as I’m sure many are aware, support for HD DVD will be non-existent after around June time. Sad as it is, therefore I hope that future Qosmio models come equipped with a Blu-Ray drive rather than HD-DVD.

**I’ve never heard of Harman/Kardon though I have to say, the speakers on this laptop are BRILLIANT, not just decent for a laptop, they’re really good anyway, and I can safely say, they are the best speakers I have ever heard on a laptop, it even beats a fair few desktops on this! It’s even got a sub-woofer!

Update: Added TV Tuner, Webcam & Fingerprint reader to the list of hardware

So today, I received a Toshiba Qosmio G40 from the nice guys over at talktoshiba.com and I have to say - I was a bit sceptical when they approached me asking if i wanted to borrow a £2000 laptop for a few weeks.

All of that was gone however when DHL turned up at the door

My first impressions of the machine are:

1. It’s big - really big (intended as a desktop replacement I assume)
2. It’s not THAT attractive, I think this is partly the size though
3. Sound is good quality
4. Screen is good quality

I’ll post some more thoughts over the coming weeks, ending with a final review, which could just be a collection of all previous comments in 1 big post

UPDATE

Some pictures for you to look at

I’ve just noticed that the bottom left corner of my laptop casing is cracked - to the point where a little bit has actually come off! I’m not very impressed with this, as checking the bottom right (i.e. bottom right left when working on it) reveals that has a crack as well.

I think I’ll end up taking it back to Currys and complaining, I only had the laptop for ~6 months, which means it’s still under warranty

I’ve posted my thoughts of Ubuntu 8.04 Beta up on http://blog.joeb454.com

If you want more precision, click here I hope you enjoy reading it.

I’m writing this from the Live CD of the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) Beta.

I’m REALLY impressed, more than I was with Gutsy (7.10)! I’ll most likely be installing this later on tonight, and I’ll put up the results on my other blog (blog.joeb454.com) afterwards. I’m out til later tonight, and most of tomorrow, but the results will definitely be up at some point Everything seems to be working out the box which is nice.

Also this mark’s the first time I’ve used a Linux disc-burning app…I’m using Windows less and less now-a-days, though despite that, I’ll keep it on my laptop, just because I’d find it hard to delete something I’ve paid for