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    Toshiba Qosmio X300-13R

    Preamble One


    Once upon a time (literally three years ago) in my native city of Kaliningrad (this is almost in the very west of Russia) I was looking for WiFi. At that time, coverage was single, literally 5-7 declared points per half a million of the population, of which 2.5 were workers. Found, swore at a low transfer rate, bought expensive cards, and again swore. There were almost no alternatives: the leased line cost crazy money (at the level of Moscow prices they offered speeds almost an order of magnitude lower), modem access ... (well, let's not deal with necromancy :). In general, the situation was, to put it mildly, bad.
    Footnote: Kaliningrad is famous for its ice-free port and territorial isolation from the "big" Russia: you can get into it now (without a foreign passport) only by air and water.

    But even then I believed that life would change for the better and predicted that literally in 2-3 years catering establishments with free (and working) WiFi would appear. And so it happened: in the spring and summer of 2009, at least 1 point with free wireless Internet was launched in the city. In the very center of the city. The Internet has become available to everyone.

    Preamble Two


    At the E-Commerce Conference (held just two weeks ago), the Xan Agency announcedunprecedented generosityUnprecedented promotions: get a laptop for free. Yes, there was also an article on Habré . This was all done with the generous hands of the BeCompact store .

    I was lucky: I was just sitting on the right stream (because I somehow somehow lost sight of the article on Habré) and was able to quickly navigate.

    Well, yes, the laptop was not forever given, but for (almost) a week. But about this, in fact, the main part:

    Toshiba Qosmio test drive


    Toshiba Qosmio vs.  Toshiba satelliteFirst impression: a powerful machine. In all senses. Claimed weight: 4.3 kg (+ Toshiba standard charger, weighs more than kg). Total: one and a half times heavier than my current Toshiba Satellite P-100 (weight with charging is less than 4 kg).

    Second impression: Vista must die! I still do not remember such an insane amount of reboots during installation. About three hours later the laptop was brought into a more or less operational state.

    Third impression: Vista must live! I managed to set up a wireless network between two laptops on it in 2 clicks, on XP I picked it up for 15 minutes, but I couldn’t do anything intuitively (yes, I'm not a professional system administrator :). Fourth impression:

    the sound system is just super. In this photo (top view), 4 speakers are clearly visible: 2 ordinary ones (in the front, probably covered with plugs in the form of flames), 2 - for high frequencies (near the monitor, on the red panel). Unfortunately, there is no photograph of the bottom surface, but there is a subwoofer.

    Fifth impression: the disk slows down :( It is clearly seen that all system performance depends on operations with the hard disk, therefore, there is no increase in performance in those applications (or parts thereof) that actively use it (for example, downloading browsers or downloading games) The RAM (4 GB), the processor and the video card (about it below) work fine, and on the second evening all the available episodes of the sixth season of the House were reviewed.

    Impression six:"Wings" on the sides of the monitor rule. In the photo above, small semicircular protrusions along the edges of the monitor are noticeable - these are they. Perfectly limit the viewing angle and protect from excess light. Speaking of light: by default, Toshiba Qosmio has a very bright and clear picture. It is adjustable, just for those days, while this laptop was used, the brightness did not turn off. The seventh impression: the laptop is loud and not very comfortable. The keyboard panel (seen in the comparison) is one and a half times higher, it’s not so convenient to type texts (it’s understandable: the main purpose is multimedia). In terms of noise, it is neither louder nor quieter than the Toshiba Satellite (although I expected to use more powerful cooling technologies, but the fan turns on at about the same frequency: apparently, the heat removed is also very significant). Impression Eight:

    Toshiva Qosmio vs.  Toshiba Stellite (side)

    overall performance at altitude. Video / sound work at 5+ (even managed to shut down a neighboring drill, dokanuyuschy during working hours). Toys (I launched King's Bounty: Princess in armor ) also fly (all settings are maximum - the picture display speed is higher than on the Toshiba Satellite), the video card is very fast (GeForce 9700M, 512Mb). Yes, for this special thanks to “Ksan” - at the weekend I had something to entertain myself with :)

    Last impression: this colossus glows with all red lights at night. You can get scared out of habit :)

    Parameters


    Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
    Memory: 4 GB
    Hard disk: 320Gb (5400rpm) SATA
    Screen resolution: 1440x900
    Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS 512Mb
    Weight: 4.3 kg

    In general, we can summarize what Toshiba did An excellent multimedia laptop, which, unfortunately, is extremely inconvenient to carry (this is its only drawback, except for a slow hard drive).

    Acknowledgments


    They are sent to BeCompact online store and Xan agency . It seems to me personally that in five years such actions will become as ordinary as test drives of cars. Therefore, it will be possible to live without the Internet (finding it in public places), and without a laptop (I use promotions, and I store all the data on the Internet).

    PS sorry for the quality of some photos: only a phone was at hand

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