Ah Friday! Mythical day of the week, and the ideal opportunity for workers across the world to dust down their wallets, and prepare for an evening of socialising with chums!
But with still an hour or two to go, till the office has fully wound down – then why not pop over to one of the best websites in town, gaj-it.com – who are offering free stuff galore. You see, to help celebrate the launch of Toshiba’s new help forum for laptops called,‘Answers from Laptop Experts’, they are teaming up with the generous folk at M80, to giveaway 5 x 2GB MP3 Players.
And not only is the forum an excellent place to get a whole heap of answers for any problems you may have, but to win one of their shiny new MP3 players – all you have to do is leave a comment in the comment box here before Friday October 17th…
And as Ben tips – “humour, interesting facts or even some good old fashioned flattery about Gaj-IT or Toshiba could help your case”. So go win!
Drawing on the kind of generous spirit that I know is prevalent amongst talkToshiba readers up and down the country, today I come to you all with a question troubling ‘flogen’ over on boards.ie. Now, he’s looking for on the look out for a decent priced mid-sized laptop, somewhere higher than 10-11″ but a bit lower than 15.4″).
He says his favourite thus far is “the Toshiba U400 which he seems to be rather impressed with, but is holding out as of yet to see if he can find anything any better out – “it’s got to have an optical drive and a decent bit of HDD space, basically.”
But the responses thus far have been limited, and while one correspondent suggests that Dell could be the way forward, we were wondering if you could help out flogen. Have you had any experiences with the Toshiba Satellite U400, and if so – would it be your number one choice for the mid-range laptop market?
The Toshiba Portege M700 has been generating some favourable discussion recently, and it was a happy coincidence that my voyage onto YouTube today led to me discovering this handy video - showing off the features of the laptop in all its glory. Click the screen below to watch it, or pop over here for more information.
Anyone been at the IFA this week? No, nor I sadly – but happily for talkToshiba we have sent one of our more intrepid bloggers by the name of Tom to the event, to take a look about and see what he could see. Which was an awful lot by all accounts!
Describing the event as ‘absolutely – just absolutely huge’, we could have asked him to provide a run down of everything he had seen and been impressed by… But his fingers would have no doubt fallen off, so I thought I’d just note a few of his, and others highlights – and direct to you to his flickr pictures of the event.
Lifeatmost.com were particularly impressed with the Toshiba Qosmio X300, and have taken some pretty pictures of the powerful gaming machine, while techvideoblog have decided that the Toshiba R500 is still the one for them, saying that the “this business high end Toshiba Laptop has been out for over a year, but it’s still cool to check out”.
“Toshiba’s SD Multi Tool and SD Photo Editor are a nice, touchable surprise” say gizmohacker.com – but one of my favourite photos I’ve seen is the one below of a dismantle Toshiba Portégé R500 taken by our very own Tom. It’s rare you really get behind the (rather attractive) shell of a laptop like this. Take a look, and if you were at the show, do leave us a comment and let us know how you got on.
We Got Served, the windows home server site, has kindly offered its “WGS prize for the coolest thing seen at IFA today” award to *fanfare please* the new Toshiba Qosmio G50 laptop.
Despite his admission that you “wouldn’t want to take one out on a date”, and his usual dismissal of desktop replacement laptops, Terry is nonetheless head-over-heels with admiration for this computer. Most notable to him is the Gesture Control technology “which allows you to control the computer (including MediaCenter) simply by waving your fist in the air – the gestures you make are picked up by the G50’s integrated webcam.”
He continues “You may never use it in anger if you own one of these laptops, but it scores big on the show-off scale.” Too true – what better way to impress the neighbors than flicking on an episode of Family Guy with nothing more than a flick of the thumb? A warning though: “That said, if you are using one, be careful not to get angry in front of the TV - who knows the fist-shaking carnage you could cause!” Good point Terry!
Toshiba style may be timeless, but in these days where strong individuality is key amongst almost everyone, increased customisation of one’s laptop is becoming second nature. From desktop backgrounds of favoured sports teams, models or friends – to themes, aggregated home pages and more, one way is simply not enough. And it is unsurprising that some
particularly dedicated individuals have taken the time to customise their Toshiba laptops in some breathtaking style!
Just look at what happened to Jeff’s Tecra M5 when he combined “a great graphic, a great offering, and a little adhesive”.
It’s always nice to get in a jolly positive review from a blog we’re big fans of, and so this glowing take on the Toshiba Satellite A300D has seen smiles all round the talkToshiba office today.
And it’s the gaj-it.com blog today who provided the write-up, and without going into too much detail (we suggest you pop over and read here), just take a look at the overall verdict.
Particularly impressed with the sound which was “clear and crisp, even at a high level” which meant that the reviewer’s “girlfriend’s Trance music collection could be heard for the neighbours to get annoyed at”. Coupled with that, Arutha added “this laptop makes worrying about hard disc space non existent”, whilst suggesting “the screen is a rather nice affair, with it being not too small or not too large”.
Of course, it can’t all be to one’s taste – “The mouse pad is a different story, which I didn’t like at all”, but overall – a very positive review indeed! Read it all here.
OK – so the Games Convention in Leipzig is fully underway, and as computer fans descend upon Germany in their masses, it’s time to take a look at what delights are emerging. Expectations of mindblowing technology and gaming revelations are high, and while farplaner is enthralled about what Pro Evolution Soccer has to offer in 2009, twobrothersandasister are discovering new delights with Mad World on the Nintendo Wii.
And it’s exciting news for Toshiba too, who will be showcasing the powerful new Qosmio X300 gaming laptop (pictured), featuring the latest Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX9300 quad-core processor technology together with the new Gaming X20 optical laser mouse. For more information, the notebook is given a good going-over spec wise by both Crave and Pocket Lint who say this notebook offers a “sleek design aimed at gamers”.
Elsewhere, marketnews blog suggests that “Gamers will likely gravitate toward something like the Toshiba Qosmio X300 that can serve as the device for “fun” time as well as when it’s down to business” and invoid.org agrees, claiming the X300 is “built for gaming purists”. It’s due to be released in Europe towards the tail end of 2008, but for those who can’t wait that long – it can be seen at Toshiba booth B02, Hall 4, at the show, from 20th to 24th August 2008.
After a plethora of pictures and specifications doing exceptional work of conveying what this bit of kit is capable of, Nigel gets down to the crux of the matter. He does admit to a penchant for Toshiba because, “support is excellent, the quality is decent and the performance usually dependable” and as far as he’s concerned the U400 is no different.”
Specific to the U400 though is his praise of it being fast, compact and light. Meaning for Nigel, in terms of a general purpose portable computer, “You can do a lot worse for a lot more money.”
“With so many covetable laptops being released over the past few weeks, it’s Toshiba’s turn this week, with the announcement of the lightweight, limited edition Portégé M800 Lappy” over on shinyshiny.tv. And, by the sound of it, there’s no doubt they’ve uncovered a very pretty laptop.
After discussing all of the specifications, shinyshiny proverbially ice the cake “to top it all off it has a rather pretty pearl white chassis with silver contrasting and a white LED outline”. With “increased battery life and high definition multimedia performance”, thanks to that Intel Centrino 2 processor technology, and a few little tasty extras like face recognition software, a fingerprint reader, FM tuner and Bluetooth 2.1 – this little notebook is nothing if not sleek.
Oh – and a quick Twitter update from Jim at feetup.org, who currently has one of our Toshiba Tecra M9s for review. “Loving the Tecra M9 on loan from talktoshiba - it’s very usable with Ubuntu” he says – good stuff Jim. More to follow from him soon.
If you are an established forum member or blogger and want to get your hands
on a Toshiba notebook to test drive, contact us and we'll see what we can do to
help.
talk Toshiba is sponsored by Toshiba. Comments and opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Toshiba.
Ah Friday! Mythical day of the week, and the ideal opportunity for workers across the world to dust down their wallets, and prepare for an evening of socialising with chums!
