C0deZer0
Oc'D To Rhythm And Police
Premium
join:2001-10-03
Davenport, FL
 ·Verizon FIOS
| [Notebooks] Asus or Toshiba?
Long story short, I'm trying to pull for getting myself a nice laptop with the money I have before x-mas rolls around, hoping that something good will get a Black Friday-level deal.
At the moment though, I'm currently looking between these two:
Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q701
Pro's:
•Superficial as it may be, I've yet to have a Toshiba product go wrong on me. 
•Stupidly cheap now 
•Slightly higher-resolution display
•A built-in 56k for emergencies, I suppose
•gigE LAN
•Four speakers and a sub... on a notebook?!
•ExpressCard slot
•DDR3 RAM
•slightly more L2 cache on the CPU
•Faster hard drive
Cons:
•It is a rather large thing in person. Not that I can't deal with the weight; just means that I'd have to buy a new backpack to actually take it with me.
•As I understand it, its GPU is basically an overclocked 9600 series (comparing to the desktop equivalent), but is that going to hold it over gaming-wise? Gaming with PhysX?
•Generally, I like designs that are clean, and well, the fire pattern on the back is too busy for me. Just glad that it's somewhere I won't be looking at all that often.
#2 is Asus G50Vt-X1
Pro's
•More MHz
•about 120GB more storage space, which after nearly filling up the 500GB RAID in my main desktop, may actually help.
•9800M GS
•Support for a/b/g/n instead of just b/g/n with the Toshiba
•one more USB 2.0 port
•Less junkware preinstalled
•Almost two pounds lighter
Con's:
•While this GPU is based off the 9800 series instead of the 9600 series, the GS part worries me. How gimped is that GPU going to be?
•The reduced video resolution is admittedly annoying, but may serve to keep this thing viable for longer.
•Why would such a system come with a serial port nowadays?  All that thing's going to do is just gather dust, personally.
•As of this writing, it's about $250 more, too... of which I could just as easily put toward an extended warranty on the Toshiba to cover my ass.
So, of the two...
•Which will I have an easier time finding XP drivers for?
•Which company will have more frequent video driver updates? I know Toshiba initially had problems with this when they started making those SLi notebooks.
•Can the extra clock speed in the Asus overcome the extra cache the Toshiba has?
•How big a diff is 5400 v. 7200rpm nowadays with these newer notebook drives?
•Which will remain viable longer, gaming-wise (in your opinion, or with review(s)) ?
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Front Line Force Fortress Forever |
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trparky
Bite My Shiny Metal Ass
Premium,MVM
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
clubs: | Go for the Toshiba, I've not seen good things about the ASUS notebooks.
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Tom |
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3SGTE
ST215W
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-23
there
clubs:
| reply to C0deZer0
Hands down, the ASUS.
I have an ASUS notebook, it is nearly 5 years old and the battery is still good.
I can say without any reservations that I would happily pay a premium for another ASUS.
Unfortunately I can't see any XP drivers on the ASUS site.
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Striving for Parfection. |
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trparky
Bite My Shiny Metal Ass
Premium,MVM
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
clubs:
·AT&T U-Verse
2 edits | reply to C0deZer0
I am going to tell you this dude, you are NOT going to want to put XP on that.
First, it's got 4 GB of RAM... you'll be throwing that away. Second, the notebook comes with Vista 64-bit; 64-bit is the way of the future and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know anything. Third, 64-bit Vista, IMHO is a heck of a lot more stable than XP ever can be.
I say give it a couple of weeks with Vista and then come back to me and tell me I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, then so be it.
As for me, I've gone completely 64-bit Vista and see no issues, software or otherwise.
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Tom |
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Bobcat
Premium
join:2001-02-04
Bedminster, NJ | reply to C0deZer0
It's a nit, but I've used my laptop's 56k port to send a couple of faxes. It's come in handy when I needed it. |
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Ctrl Alt Del
Premium
join:2002-02-18
| reply to C0deZer0
My opinion of the Toshiba:
- Rather ugly.
- It's painfully thick; it's almost a 2 inch slab of plastic.
- Placement of the bottom speakers is bad. If you rest your wrists on the laptop, they might cover the bottom set of speakers.
- Wimpy resolution for that screen size.
My opinion of the ASUS:
- 1366 x 768? A widescreen 1024 x 768 on a 15 inch monitor? That's worse than the Toshiba.
Overall, neither Toshiba or ASUS are going to give you rapid/frequent driver updates. And neither are going to offer Windows XP drivers. All you have to do is go to the respective websites and check their download center. I'm sure you're capable of that.
If you go to Toshiba's website and look at the Windows XP drivers for the X305-Q701, it only lists the Bluetooth and Software Modem. The chipset, video card, sound card, touchpad, ethernet card, card reader, and BIOS control panel are all Vista only drivers.
The ASUS website doesn't even list Windows XP drivers at all. It only has Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit drivers.
Basically, you're going to get Vista no matter what if you get a Windows laptop.
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less talk, more music |
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chucky5150
Divers do it Deeper
join:2001-11-03
New Iberia, LA
clubs:
| reply to C0deZer0
Well I do have an asus g50v and I must say that I like it very much.
It plays warhammer and fallout 3 just fine.
I didn't buy it to replace my desktop but it has.
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Member of the US Air Force since May 7th, 2002 To March 29th, 2005
"You sneak up behind yourself and remove your pants before you realize what's going on." KOL |
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hypersurf1
join:2000-11-22
Hillsborough, NJ | reply to C0deZer0
Asus, the 9800M GS is a smokin fast GPU. Asus also has a 2 year warranty. |
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