Jonzee.com

Recently I was made the owner of a new notebook PC and its been about 3 weeks and I figured Id let you all know what I think about it. The PC is the Toshiba Satelite P105-S9722. If you go to the Toshiba website, you will see the customizable P105 series of notebooks and this particular one is the pre-configured model that you can find in your local stores (which I got mine from CompUsa). The price range on this model Ive seen go anywhere from $1899.99 to $2049.99, it just all depends on if the store you get it from has any rebates or sale going on at the time of purchase.

First of all lets talk about the specs, I talked about this particular notebook earlier along with a few others I would consider to be in the same class when I was trying to make my decision. But this Toshiba has a nice healthy set of system specs and components. 2ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2048mb DDR2 ram, 17" WXGA+ screen, Nvidia Geforce go 7900 w/ 256mb VRAM, double layer DVD burner, Fingerprint Scanner, SD card reader, 802.11 a/b/g wireless and a 200gb HD.

2 of the things that were important to me in my decision was that it had a Core 2 Duo processor and a Nvidia 7900 or above series video card. The reason for that, as far as the video card, when I did my research on mobile video cards there seem to be a decent size gap in performance that started at the Geforce 7900. I really like to be able to play games comfortably. This notebook is going to be my main machine (for a while anyway) so I wanted to make sure I could get sufficient gaming performance. When it comes to the processor, I knew that the Core 2 Duo is king right now and when I looked a little deeper into things, I noticed that starting at the 2 ghz model, you get double the cache than lets say the 1.83ghz or 1.66ghz models. so my thing was I wanted a 2ghz Core 2 Duo and a 7900 Geforce.

Did it pay off? I would definitely say yes. This notebook so far has taken everything I have thrown to it in stride. Ive tried out several games that I had (Dark messiah, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2, Prey) and played them all at the native resolution of my screen, which is 1400×900, with all of the graphic settings set to high and it played them without a hitch, shake, or jitter. Even Neverwinter Nights 2, which is known to not run well, ran with very acceptable performance. Running other software, such as Audacity (when recording podcast) and converting video seems to do pretty good also, I don’t get the sluggish bogged down pauses when I get towards the end of the podcast with 10 or more tracks that I was use to getting with my previous notebook. I also have a bad habit of running lots of programs on a regular basis at the same time and I had no problem maintaining my 2 or 3 open browsers each with 5 or more tabs along with Photoshop and Word, sometimes I’m even transferring files back and forth on my network while doing all that. but as far as performance, I would say that I am completely satisfied with what this notebook has been capable of so far.

One thing that concerned me however when I was searching for a notebook was that even though the HDD that comes with it is a 200gb HDD, it is a 4200 RPM HDD. So far the only time that I noticed that being a problem when playing games, the loading times are a little longer than I was use to. for some, long load times really bugs them, but i’ve never been that big of a complainer when it comes to load times unless its just ridiculously long.

One of the other features of this notebook that I didn’t pay any attention to when I was researching it, but turned out to be pretty cool is the fingerprint scanner. Each user on your PC can configure their login to use the scanner in place of typing in login and passwords for various things you do on your PC. To start it is pretty easy, you go through a user setup where you scan 2 finger a couple of times each, you can do every finger if you want, but the minimum is 2 fingers (you only us 1 finger when you need to have your fingerprint scanned). Once you have your login trained, then whenever you go to a website or open a program that needs a login, you have the option to ad that login to your fingerprint scanner profile. When you need to log into places that you have in your profile, you just brush your finger against the scanner and it logs you in. It even works with your windows login, so whoever scans their finger will be the account that logs into windows. Ive found it to be pretty useful.

As far as other things you can do, there are Svideo, VGA, DVI and audio outputs. There are also 4 USB, Firewire, Ethernet, modem, and a Mem card slot. the memory card slot is a little weird, when you insert a SD card, it looks like theres no end to the slot. Look like if your not careful you can push the memory card all the way in the slot to the point where you wouldn’t be able to get it out. Also there are volume controls on the front of the notebook that are very easy to get to.

DVD movies and audio CD’s can also be played without booting into windows to do so. If you have a DVD in the drive, all you have to do is press the media button above the keyboard and it starts Toshiba’s Express Media Player and will play your movie without the hassle of starting windows just to watch Clerks 2. And movies…everything in general looks really nice on the 17" Trubrite screen. No glare, bright images, plenty of color. while 1400×900 isn’t the highest resolutions available for 17" notebooks, it works pretty well and you wont be disappointed.

Well So far I am satisfied with this notebook and would recommend it to anyone looking for a new laptop in the $2000 range. The only downside I would have with this notebook is the 4200RPM HDD. And even thought it looks really pretty, the top of the notebook is made of that really shiny material that I can see will hold a lot of fingerprints and scratches (then I would have to make use of one of these).

To listen to the podcast where I talked about this Notebook click here
To read more about other Notebooks in this price/performance range click here
For more info, or to purchase the Toshiba Satellite P105-S9722 click here