Toshiba Satellite M60-BK3 & General Q's

[okb]

I'm looking at picking up one of these today, what I'm wondering is if this is a good laptop and if there's anything with the same/similar specs that's better or a better deal. Note that I'm in Canada, so all prices are in Monopoly money. Btw, I do not want a P4-based lappy, it wouldn't even survive the flight back home before the battery will die lol. And the heat...well I'd like children someday, maybe.

I also have a couple of (probably stupid) questions, being new to the laptop scene and all. What the hell is "shared memory" when talking about graphics? Does that mean the video card has no on-board memory and uses RAM? If so does this reduce power consumption? Will that affect general usage performance? Obviously not ideal for gaming, but I'm not a huge gamer these days.

Another question about screens. This lappy has a WXGA TFT W/ TruBrite...what essentially does that mean and what do all the different XGA, SXGA+ and so on lables really mean?

Should I get a second/larger battery now or don't bother?

This laptop won't be used for a lot of graphics-intense projects, probably a few games of whatever I have laying around, mostly school/browsing/MUDing and likely DVD movies (ok I guess that's graphics-intensive). Thanks for reading so far, here's the specs. Opinions/comments/flames appreciated. Thanks!

Model: Toshiba M60-BK3 Centrino (PSM60C-BK300E)
CPU: Pentium M 750 1.86GHz
RAM: 512
Screen: 17" WXGA TFT W/ TruBrite
HDD: 100GB 4200RPM (little slow, but I'm well used to slow computers )
Optical: DVD +/- RW & CD-RW drive (does that mean DVD Burner? If not that's fine)
Video: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 With 128MB DDR Dedicated Video Memory
Cache: 32k L1 2MB L2
Fax
LAN: 10/100; Wireless 802.11ag (Centrino model)
Bus: 533MHz
A bunch o' software, mostly crap as usual
Memory slots etc blah blah you know how it goes.

$1899.99

It's $200 off (from $2099.99 until tomorrow which is cool, it also comes with a free D-Link DI-524 AirPlus G 2.4GHz wireless router, but that is not a factor (it's on super sale too, so it's basically a bonus for me for free since I'd get it anyways). Seems a decent router, and hell for the price I don't care if it's crap. I can always sell it and get a Linksys (have a wired one already). Btw, this is at Future Shop if that's of any help.

IMO it's not a bad price, not fantastic, but for everything it has it's only a few hundred more than substantially less beefy models usually with "shared memory" or no optical drive (WTF!!). It's spec'd to last 3.3 hours, so I figure probably 3 hours of average use (probably w/o WiFi enabled) which to me sounds good.

Oh one other thing, how upgradable is this laptop? I don't think that's a big deal but in a year or two I might change my tune. Might be nice to have that option, but I don't think it'll factor into my decision making. I can always ask at the store, but I have trouble taking chain-store salesmen's word on the finer details (evesdropping is scary sometimes).

Sorry for the length, but I wanna be thourough, any and all help is hugely appreciated, thanks again folks.

 

[Paperlantern]

since there are multiple questions in your post, i am gonna quote yours and answer within, my responses are preceded with ***.... =) hope this helps

Originally posted by: okb
I'm looking at picking up one of these today, what I'm wondering is if this is a good laptop and if there's anything with the same/similar specs that's better or a better deal. Note that I'm in Canada, so all prices are in Monopoly money. Btw, I do not want a P4-based lappy, it wouldn't even survive the flight back home before the battery will die lol. And the heat...well I'd like children someday, maybe.

I also have a couple of (probably stupid) questions, being new to the laptop scene and all. What the hell is "shared memory" when talking about graphics? Does that mean the video card has no on-board memory and uses RAM? If so does this reduce power consumption? Will that affect general usage performance? Obviously not ideal for gaming, but I'm not a huge gamer these days.

***Yes it does mean that the memory is "Borrowed" from the system memory to run graphics, usually system RAM is substantially SLOWER in speed then your average VRAM, so theres a performance hit there (may notice some grain, or some more cpu usage when watching DVDs), plus it takes away some of the systems available RAM, also creating a performance hit... ouch, double whammy, but i see in your specs that this one has dedicated, so your good***

Another question about screens. This lappy has a WXGA TFT W/ TruBrite...what essentially does that mean and what do all the different XGA, SXGA+ and so on lables really mean?

***Each label has its own native resolution, essentially how much real estate can be displayed on the screen. heres a link to a page with a chart showing resolution on different types of terminology, http://www.projectorpoint.co.uk/projectorresolution.htm

it is for projectors, but most projectors are LCD based for thier displays, so it should be same or similar, THe WXGA is jsut the wide format of XGA (the 16:9 ratio). The truBrite is a technology of screens, or rather a type of finishing, rather then the duller finish, its got a really shiny finish, which can be annoying with glare, but improves the viewing angle tremendously on an LCD screen, youve prolly noticed sometimes on LCD's if you move to the side or up and down, the colors wash, that angle is increased with TruBrite, plus, its a really bright and crisp picture.***


Should I get a second/larger battery now or don't bother?

***I wouldnt bother right off the bat, wait till they come down, and your original starts to lose its pep, the 3.3 is probably very accurate***

This laptop won't be used for a lot of graphics-intense projects, probably a few games of whatever I have laying around, mostly school/browsing/MUDing and likely DVD movies (ok I guess that's graphics-intensive). Thanks for reading so far, here's the specs. Opinions/comments/flames appreciated. Thanks!

Model: Toshiba M60-BK3 Centrino (PSM60C-BK300E)
CPU: Pentium M 750 1.86GHz
RAM: 512
Screen: 17" WXGA TFT W/ TruBrite
HDD: 100GB 4200RPM (little slow, but I'm well used to slow computers )
Optical: DVD +/- RW & CD-RW drive (does that mean DVD Burner? If not that's fine)
Video: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 With 128MB DDR Dedicated Video Memory
Cache: 32k L1 2MB L2
Fax
LAN: 10/100; Wireless 802.11ag (Centrino model)
Bus: 533MHz
A bunch o' software, mostly crap as usual
Memory slots etc blah blah you know how it goes.

$1899.99

It's $200 off (from $2099.99 until tomorrow which is cool, it also comes with a free D-Link DI-524 AirPlus G 2.4GHz wireless router, but that is not a factor (it's on super sale too, so it's basically a bonus for me for free since I'd get it anyways). Seems a decent router, and hell for the price I don't care if it's crap. I can always sell it and get a Linksys (have a wired one already). Btw, this is at Future Shop if that's of any help.

IMO it's not a bad price, not fantastic, but for everything it has it's only a few hundred more than substantially less beefy models usually with "shared memory" or no optical drive (WTF!!). It's spec'd to last 3.3 hours, so I figure probably 3 hours of average use (probably w/o WiFi enabled) which to me sounds good.

Oh one other thing, how upgradable is this laptop? I don't think that's a big deal but in a year or two I might change my tune. Might be nice to have that option, but I don't think it'll factor into my decision making. I can always ask at the store, but I have trouble taking chain-store salesmen's word on the finer details (evesdropping is scary sometimes).

***Upgrading with laptops is USUALLY limited to just about Hard Drive, and Memory only, in some cases you may be able to get a new processor with a SLIGHT bump in speed that the board will recognize, but they arent as a wide range as desktop boards, and is never worth the trouble or extra money. THe HDD and the memory are very universal though and can get new ones for far cheaper to increase capacity.***

Sorry for the length, but I wanna be thourough, any and all help is hugely appreciated, thanks again folks.

It sounds like a good machine, i'm never in the market for a laptop so i dont know great of a deal it is, with a free wireless router, thats not bad, and the $200 off. If i had the money i would probably buy it, i work on toshibas all the time for a living, and overall they are decent machines, but many do have thier flaws, if its any consolation, i have not seen a M60 in for service at all yet (dont know for sure how long theyve been out, or if they were released in thee states, BUT i havnt seen one yet). if i had the cash, i think i would buy it, its got good specs.

 

[okb]

Thanks for the reply. It is pretty new, was hard-pressed to find any reviews on it. From what I've seen people say good things about Toshiba, I had it narrowed down to Toshiba or Compaq, but I didn't see any Compaq machines with the specs I wanted. On my way to the store, hopefully they've got some left.

Cheers.

 

[okb]

If anyone is interested I'm going to put down some thoughts/impressions of the M60 since I picked one up last night. It's a newer model and there's not much out there about them, so it might be helpful to some or a load of rubbish to others.

It's an absolute beast of a machine. A tad bigger in person than it looks from pictures online, though it was beside a P4 Toshiba that dwarfed it and I rarely use laptops. Very impressed with it thusfar, very fast and it doesn't get too warm. Around the touchpad and the upper-right (upper part of the extended keypad) get warm to the touch, but anything but uncomfortable (probably hdd/cpu). My only complaint is the lack of a legitimate copy of Windows, though I'm pretty sure this is the norm. My father bought a Dell PC and it came with a "Dell version" of Windows. IMO if I'm paying this much money I want the Windows CD. With the crippled version of the CD it's impossible to do a fresh install, as the only option is to delete everything on your disk and let it install all the programs that came pre-installed. And there are several bloatware pieces of junk, but I got most of those. More of a pain in the ass than an all-out complaint, but it's just an irritant to me. No, I don't need accessability apps or even one that shows all open windows if you happen to leave a finger touching a corner of the touchpad (it was driving my wife nuts until I figured out how it was happening, it was promptly sent to uninstall heaven).

When I first saw it I immediately noticed the touchpad was off-centre (left of centre). It looked odd but it's really nice when you have both hands on the keypad and you can use either thumb to control the mouse. I'm not used to laptop keypads and I'm constantly missing letters, or the backspace key and hitting NumLock lol. Not a complaint, it's more amusing really. They keypad, btw, feels very solid. Actually the whole thing seems well-build, it should for it's size and weight class. Not a single dead spot on the screen either, was a tad worried about that as I've heard stories of people going through 3 or 4 until they got one with a flawless screen.

Movies look pretty swank on the large, crisp screen (watched a bit of CTHD...until I finally passed out) and the action scenes were quite nice. Removed the pre-installed software (Sonic) for PowerDVD. Have yet to test out the burner, never had a DVD burner and I didn't even think to get some media last night.

WiFi works pretty well, the Internet is actually faster on this machine but my desktop is an ancient PII 300 so yeah, welcome to the new Millenium I guess. The router seems to almost drop the wireless at times, not sure what that's about. Have to dig around and see. The speed will drop right down to 1.0Mbps though with excellent strength. *shrug* Saw a few complaints about the DLinks (DI-524) doing similar things, did get the updated firmware but I may try a few things and see what happens.

Raw power-wise it sings. Haven't done any benchmarks yet and in light of my PC's specs I have absolutely no useful reference point, but then again it's all about perception right? Apps that took close to a minute to load take mere seconds.

Speakers sound very good, better than I had expected. Though my left arm partly covers a speaker when typing and they're angled slightly down which is a bit puzzling, but they have a nice crisp sound. No doubt having a CL card would smoke them, but meh.

It's a bit large for a true portable laptop, but for the price and the fixings (really, it's only a couple hundred more than a substantially less-goodie-filled lappy) and what we'll use it for it will be more than an adequate desktop replacement, well we're still using the PC--gotta have some kind of network. I wouldn't recommend it for people wanting portability as a main requirement, simply for it's size. Though it's not huge and heavy (tad over 7lbs), it would probably start to weigh you down if you were lugging it around all day. But I'm willing to suffer. Still need to give the battery a good workout, let it drain last night when we got home and it's full now. It didn't last too long last night, but it was fresh out of the box so that wouldn't be fair. Very happy with this buy, wasn't planning on spending 2g's on a laptop, but we spend little on computers/parts and I couldn't resist. And hey, my birthday's coming up soon. Happy birthday to me!

Cheers.

 

[Paperlantern]

Well i'm glad your happy with the purchase, i know peoplae who are absolutely thrilled with thier tooshibas, and some who are downright fed up with them breaking all the time, completely depends on the model, and its funny, today someone brought itn a M55, i'm sure its very similar to your M60... thought it funny since i said yesterday ive never seen one before, and now one of the series comes in for service... didnt see what it was for though, i'll have to get back to you on that, its probably minor

have fun with it =)

 

[okb]

Heh, hope so. Well like I said it's pretty solid, have to push pretty hard on the cover to disturb the screen. I'm not worried about anything happening to it unless it's my own stupid fault.

Have fun I shall, just have to remember to do school work on it too...

 

[Yober]

Paperlantern, what is your opinion on upgrading RAM for this laptop? Is it worthwhile?

 

[Paperlantern]

RAM upgrades are completely dependant on what the machine is used for. Also, how much did yours come with to start, availability of a RAM slot is a must (some laptops come preconfigured with both full, so its more difficult to say, double the ram if the machine comes with 512, that consists of two 256 modules). And does it really NEED more, some video editing hobbies or occupations require maximum memory for best performance. however if your a standard user, using the machine to say surf the net, check e mail, listen to music, and watch the occasional DVD, an upgrade may not even be necessary.

If you can tell me the specs of your particualr machine, and what you intend on using it for, i can make a recommendation on wheather or not you should upgrade it =)

 

[Yober]

I've exactly the same model as the okb has

Model: Toshiba M60-BK3 Centrino (PSM60C-BK300E)
CPU: Pentium M 750 1.86GHz
RAM: 512 x1
Screen: 17" WXGA TFT W/ TruBrite
HDD: 100GB 4200RPM
Optical: DVD +/- RW & CD-RW drive
Video: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 With 128MB DDR Dedicated Video Memory
Cache: 32k L1 2MB L2
Fax
LAN: 10/100; Wireless 802.11ag (Centrino model)
Bus: 533MHz

I am new to the laptop scenario. This laptop will be used as a home PC mostly (I am getting rid of my desktop Sony VAIO, Pentium III, 700Mhz, 20GB HD)
Please advise
Thanks!
BTW I have started my own thread where the same question was raised about the RAM upgrade for this model. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=51&threadid=1692119&enterthread=y

 

[Yober]

here is the detailed info about my laptop
http://www.toshiba.ca/web/product.grp?lg=en§ion=1&group=1&product=4670

 

[okb]

Awsome laptop isn't it Yober? I love mine other than a few minor gripes, but well nothing's perfect and I'm just being picky. Wouldn't mind tweaking video performance, I think it's a little sluggish, but that could also be related to the RAM (though I doubt it?). Anyways, heading over to your thread for the RAM discussion...

 

[Yober]

okb indeed awesome lappy, I'm really happy with my choice. We need to upgrade the RAM as much as our pocket will permit and that's probably it. Unless gurus out here will advise us to tweak some other modules...

 

[okb]

Maybe they can tell us how to hax0r the hdd so it's not so bloody slow, then I could hold off on the RAM. In the end I'll probably just end up with doubling my RAM, if I ever get to the point where I need 2G I can always sell what I have.

What's your take on their docking stations? I'm considering it, but not sure if it's really worth it. Bit of a subjective question and I don't want to buy it just for the sake of having one...well, not entirely...heh. Not sure if you've tried this or not, but I have a spare monitor (19") that was to go with my PC, circumstances don't allow for that right now so I had it hooked up to my laptop in dual screen mode, full rez. Yeah that's pretty f'n sweet, if you can give it a shot. Fun little lappy, if a bit heavy to lug around for long periods of time, but it's worth the shoulder pain.

 

[Yober]

The dilemma I still have is to get the right type of RAM which will work perfectly on this particular model. As per my own thread on this forum http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=51&threadid=1692119&enterthread=y I am still trying to get the answer from someone knowledgeable enough to tell me if Kingston?s DDR2 RAM part #KVR533D2S4/1G see this as an example http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1
indeed have the same specs as the originally specified Kingston's DDR2 RAM part #KTT533D2/1G see the fourth line from the top http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configu...+M60-BK3&distributor=0&submit1=Search?
As for the docking station - yes it is nice to have it especially since nowadays laptops do not have parallel port and all other necessary old type ports est...

 

[okb]

Parallel for me is definitely not a necessity, I haven't used one in a couple of years now, I avoid anything that would require it, not sure if I can justify one for the sake of not having to unplug two cords (not to me, to the wife heheh).

I checked that RAM page you linked, and it shows the M60-BK3 as a supported system, the store I bought it from has it listed as an M60-BK3, so if that's right then it looks like you're in business.

 

[Yober]

okb please clarify ... do you mean that Kingston?s DDR2 RAM part #KVR533D2S4/1G is listed as an upgrade RAM for our laptop?

 

[okb]

My bad, I was mixing up which RAM you were talking about lol. Funny that Kingston didn't give you a clear answer. I did punch that part # into Kingston's web site and it doesn't list any Toshiba models. I have no idea how definitive those lists are.

Crucial has a nifty memory scanning util that shows compatible memory for this model. But the 1G is like $145, though cheaper than the Kingston (from Crucial that is).
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts....del=Satellite%20M60%20Series&submit=Go

 

[Yober]

this DDR2 is to new.... so may if we'll wait a bit the prices will go down for 1GB RAM

 

[okb]

That's always an option, if you're willing to wait of course.

Is there much of a performance gain going from 1G to 2G?

 

[Disconer]

Hey okb / yober - I had a forced upgrade from a Toshiba M30 to a M60 ( as my M30 was stolen and I upgraded to this one ) and what a good choice - thoroughly pleased ( minus a couple of 'little' things - see my post in the Ram discussion ) This is a great forum to chat about the good the bad and the ugly. This notebook has one of the best wireless I have seen yet and I'm absolutely addicted to the Radar the Toshiba only seems to have. Anyhow - just thought I'd plug in my two cents. TTFN