Qosmio Review: Part 3a
Posted by Joeb on April 22, 2008
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.
April 24, 2008 at 11:52 am
Hi Joeb -
Really enjoying your updates on the Qosmio - Although I suppose you’re always going to get a lot of milage from quite such a large mchine
I’m keeping a very interested eye on the blog…
Cheers
Tom x
April 26, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Nice updates, I am trying to narrow it down to a Qosmio G45 or Satellite X205, the problem between the two is that they 3GB or ram upgradable to 4 and 32 bit Vista! Im guessing the CPU and stuff is capable of 64 bit, so it’s disappointing that none of the models come with the OS that could fully take advantage of the system.
I think you may be able to get better performance if you update your OS to a Vista 64 bit edition.
April 26, 2008 at 3:41 pm
True I guess I could squeeze a little more performance from a 64 bit system. Though I am running 64 bit Ubuntu, because there is little difference in the applications available.
Some Windows applications will not currently run on 64 bit systems, which I believe is preventing the uptake of it
May 6, 2008 at 5:35 pm
yeah thats one hot laptop one of the most powerful ive seen before -.^? the only thing is it looks a little bit big but i suppose it makes up for that on the specs XD
May 7, 2008 at 2:00 am
What screen size would you recommend?
May 7, 2008 at 9:15 am
It depends what screen you are talking about
If it’s a laptop screen - 17″ is VERY big. However for desktops I’d say 22″ is pretty good if you can get it
May 12, 2008 at 11:50 pm
For laptops, guess I should have made that a bit more clear.