Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359: DX10 to go, please!
by Jarred Walton on August 31, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Design and Appearance (Cont'd)
Lifting the lid and taking a look inside, users might actually get pretty excited to start playing some games on this notebook. Toshiba places a large sticker on the palm rest that lists most of the laptop features, along with providing an advertisement for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Given the large advertisement, we were a bit surprised that the game isn't even included (though plenty of other software comes preinstalled). Luckily, the sticker is designed to peel off without leaving any residue, something we certainly would have done if we were planning on keeping the laptop. The palm rest and keyboard are made of a silver plastic compound, while the remainder of the casing is a black plastic.
Our last three laptop reviews have commented on the quality of the keyboards and how much we like having a full-size keyboard with a dedicated 10 Key pad. The PC Club ENP660 had to work to cram all the keys into a 15.4" chassis, while the 17" chassis has a bit more room and generally works out better. Alienware had a good key layout with a few areas that we felt needed improvement. We hadn't actually used the Toshiba X205 at the time we were working on the Alienware review, but it turns out that Toshiba got the keyboard pretty much perfect. You get a full 104-key keyboard, and the Fn key is only needed to access certain laptop specific functions (i.e. increase/decrease LCD brightness, disable/enable touchpad, sleep, lock, etc.) As far as we're concerned, there's really nothing that needs to be done to improve the keyboard layout.
The touchpad on the other hand is a bit odd. For the most part it functions as you would expect, but if you tap the top right corner it glows blue and provides access to additional functions. There are six application quick launch buttons in the main area, and a volume control on the right. Some people might find this to be more useful, but we accidentally engaged this function quite a few times during testing, and it was always disconcerting. Suddenly the mouse cursor would stop moving, and for a moment we'd move our finger around trying to figure out what was going on. Then we'd look down and notice the glowing touchpad. The six quick launch applications are user configurable, but we're still not really convinced that this feature is necessary.
The bottom of the notebook has three small compartments secured by four screws that provide access to the memory slots and hard drives, as well as the mini-PCI slot. Anyone interested in getting at the graphics chip or processor will have to remove quite a few more screws. It's not readily apparent from this angle, but much of the bottom of the laptop is set about a quarter inch deeper than the middle section. This middle section is used for airflow to help cool the CPU, GPU, memory, and chipsets.
Pulling off the three covers, there's still not much to see other than a couple of hard drive sleds and the SO-DIMMs. Again, for reference, the SO-DIMMs are about a half inch below the surface of the cover. There's really quite a bit of room for air to move through the center section. Not surprisingly, we found that the laptop generally ran quite cool relative to other 17" laptops.
Toshiba includes a 9-cell 65 WHr battery, which falls somewhere in between the 50 WHr batteries used on many smaller notebooks and the 95WHr battery used on the Alienware m9750. Not pictured is the external power adapter, which actually appears to be identical to the model used on the Alienware m9750, other than the fact that the laptop connector is slightly different. When we first saw the adapter, we were quite shocked. We can understand the need for a 180W power brick for something like the m9750, but considering the lack of SLI and the use of a lower performance graphics chip, we really doubt that we'll get anywhere near drawing 180W of power. Of course, better to have more than enough power than to fall short at times.
As a whole, the design and construction of the Satellite X205 makes some interesting compromises. The feet on the bottom of the notebook definitely help keep the internals cool when the notebook is sitting on a hard surface, but anyone looking for a thinner design will be disappointed. Then again, most people looking for thinner, lighter notebooks probably aren't considering a 17" chassis regardless. Potential buyers will want to make sure they get an appropriate carrying case for the laptop, however, as we did have our own 17" notebook bag in which we were unable to place the X205 due to its size. If you can get past the slightly larger design, though, we found a lot to like about this laptop. The protruding feet are not really comfortable to have sitting on your two thighs, but the flip side is that if you want to have the laptop straddle one thigh the center section is open and you won't be blocking off any air intakes. The attractive exterior and basically perfect keyboard layout more than make up for any other concerns in our opinion. However, we still need to see how this thing actually performs.
 |
Lifting the lid and taking a look inside, users might actually get pretty excited to start playing some games on this notebook. Toshiba places a large sticker on the palm rest that lists most of the laptop features, along with providing an advertisement for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Given the large advertisement, we were a bit surprised that the game isn't even included (though plenty of other software comes preinstalled). Luckily, the sticker is designed to peel off without leaving any residue, something we certainly would have done if we were planning on keeping the laptop. The palm rest and keyboard are made of a silver plastic compound, while the remainder of the casing is a black plastic.
 |
Our last three laptop reviews have commented on the quality of the keyboards and how much we like having a full-size keyboard with a dedicated 10 Key pad. The PC Club ENP660 had to work to cram all the keys into a 15.4" chassis, while the 17" chassis has a bit more room and generally works out better. Alienware had a good key layout with a few areas that we felt needed improvement. We hadn't actually used the Toshiba X205 at the time we were working on the Alienware review, but it turns out that Toshiba got the keyboard pretty much perfect. You get a full 104-key keyboard, and the Fn key is only needed to access certain laptop specific functions (i.e. increase/decrease LCD brightness, disable/enable touchpad, sleep, lock, etc.) As far as we're concerned, there's really nothing that needs to be done to improve the keyboard layout.
The touchpad on the other hand is a bit odd. For the most part it functions as you would expect, but if you tap the top right corner it glows blue and provides access to additional functions. There are six application quick launch buttons in the main area, and a volume control on the right. Some people might find this to be more useful, but we accidentally engaged this function quite a few times during testing, and it was always disconcerting. Suddenly the mouse cursor would stop moving, and for a moment we'd move our finger around trying to figure out what was going on. Then we'd look down and notice the glowing touchpad. The six quick launch applications are user configurable, but we're still not really convinced that this feature is necessary.
 |
The bottom of the notebook has three small compartments secured by four screws that provide access to the memory slots and hard drives, as well as the mini-PCI slot. Anyone interested in getting at the graphics chip or processor will have to remove quite a few more screws. It's not readily apparent from this angle, but much of the bottom of the laptop is set about a quarter inch deeper than the middle section. This middle section is used for airflow to help cool the CPU, GPU, memory, and chipsets.
 |
Pulling off the three covers, there's still not much to see other than a couple of hard drive sleds and the SO-DIMMs. Again, for reference, the SO-DIMMs are about a half inch below the surface of the cover. There's really quite a bit of room for air to move through the center section. Not surprisingly, we found that the laptop generally ran quite cool relative to other 17" laptops.
 |
Toshiba includes a 9-cell 65 WHr battery, which falls somewhere in between the 50 WHr batteries used on many smaller notebooks and the 95WHr battery used on the Alienware m9750. Not pictured is the external power adapter, which actually appears to be identical to the model used on the Alienware m9750, other than the fact that the laptop connector is slightly different. When we first saw the adapter, we were quite shocked. We can understand the need for a 180W power brick for something like the m9750, but considering the lack of SLI and the use of a lower performance graphics chip, we really doubt that we'll get anywhere near drawing 180W of power. Of course, better to have more than enough power than to fall short at times.
As a whole, the design and construction of the Satellite X205 makes some interesting compromises. The feet on the bottom of the notebook definitely help keep the internals cool when the notebook is sitting on a hard surface, but anyone looking for a thinner design will be disappointed. Then again, most people looking for thinner, lighter notebooks probably aren't considering a 17" chassis regardless. Potential buyers will want to make sure they get an appropriate carrying case for the laptop, however, as we did have our own 17" notebook bag in which we were unable to place the X205 due to its size. If you can get past the slightly larger design, though, we found a lot to like about this laptop. The protruding feet are not really comfortable to have sitting on your two thighs, but the flip side is that if you want to have the laptop straddle one thigh the center section is open and you won't be blocking off any air intakes. The attractive exterior and basically perfect keyboard layout more than make up for any other concerns in our opinion. However, we still need to see how this thing actually performs.
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torrent180 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
I have a question for X205 owners. How serious is the issue of the weight and size? I find it really hard to judge from the pics. Is it portable enough or would you really not take it out of the house?Thanks
Inkjammer - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
My X205 os slightly bulky, but I don't think it weighs that much at all. It's large, but portable. My old Alienware M7700 (Clevo D900T) felt like it weighed almost twice as much. It was slightly smaller, but weighed much, much less.torrent180 - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
So it's worth it eh, your happy with it right, no regrets?JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
My personal take is that it's bigger than any other 17" laptop I've used, so it required a larger bag than the 17" bag I have. Weight isn't my primary concern, but size... well, it could be better. Still, I don't think anyone that's after a true DTR is going to care too much. People looking for more portable laptops are probably already discounting 17" chassis designs.Inkjammer - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
I'd just like to chime in that jumping up to the 163.44 drivers available from www.laptopvideo2go.com does make quite a bit of difference in performance gaming wise -vs- the standard drivers available from Toshiba's website. My framerates were a somewhat smoother after making the driver jump.From what I understand, the 8700GT can be overclocked further with RivaTune and the 163.44 drivers rather nicely. I've not tested it on my x205 - yet. I've gotta re-install Vista Ultimate since I'm upgrading the primary HD in the system (the Hitachi hybrid-HD) to a Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 200GB drive.
If the 8700GT does, in fact, OC well it may add a lot more value to the system.
Although, I do find one thing about your review setup odd. My x205's primary 160GB HD is a Hitachi HTS541616J9A00 Hybrid HD w/392MB (387MB reorted) of flash while the secondary is a Toshiba MK1637GSX.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
Exactly how do you make the 163.44 drivers work? I grabbed them and have now wasted the past two hours attempting to make them work. There's no INF for the 163.44 drivers on LV2G, so I tried to hack one together and apparently failed. Miserably. My experience in the past has been that the regular driver updates are not remotely optimized for the laptop chipsets, but if that's not the case here I'd certainly be interested in giving it a shot.The second question is what you use for overclocking the GPU. Coolbits doesn't work under Vista, as far as I can see. What's the recommended utility? Personally, I don't think unofficial overclocking really adds that much value to a laptop. Remember: the 8700M GT is simply a clock speed increase relative to the 8600M GT. The 8600M GT is supposed to run at 475MHz, while the 8700M is speced for 625MHz. (RAM speed is the same 1400 MHz DDR in both cases.) There's almost certainly a bit more headroom available, but I'm not one to recommend pushing a laptop to the limits in terms of cooling.
As for the hard drives, I can guarantee that the two drives are the same in my particular test unit. However, it could be that shipping retail models switched to a hybrid drive. I don't know if this particular unit was manufactured several months earlier or might even be a prototype.
Regards,
Jarred Walton
Senior Editor, Displays and Laptops
http://www.AnandTech.com">http://www.AnandTech.com
Inkjammer - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
I had the same problem with the INF at first - it's somewhat hidden. On their driver list for Vista, instead of clicking the download link, click the driver version number (163.44) and it will take you to a forum posting that has far more indepth information, plus a direct link to the INF. It's also got a good amount of information, errata and known isues that the site and users that has been found while using the newer drivers.Windows Vista 32-bit Drivers
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?show...">http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?show...
Direct link to the modified INF:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/160series/16344...">http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/160series/16344...
My system came with a Hitachi HHD drive as primary, but I honestly can't tell if there's any benefit from it. Upon first boot, my X205 took near ten minutes to load up primary due to bloatware. I'm not sure if the test unit you received had a lot of pre-installed software, but mine had more than I'd ever seen before on any system. Wiping the drive and installing from a Vista DVD was almost a must - which is unfortunate for this laptop.
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Sounds like the last Toshiba I've worked on...between the extras, and the Toshiba apps, it was nothing short of horrible. The worst part is, it's very hard to tell which Toshiba apps are necessary, and the ones that the average user might consider useful often have several memory-resident apps that take a ton of RAM and really slow boot time. It was worse than any other vendor I've seen to date (including HP, Dell, etc.)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
I don't recall it taking that long to boot up when I first started the system, but then I probably wasn't paying close attention. First boot of Windows Vista always seems to take quite a while. Anyway, there's definitely a lot of preinstalled software that isn't necessary. I hinted at this on page 3: "Toshiba places a large sticker on the palm rest that lists most of the laptop features, along with providing an advertisement for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Given the large advertisement, we were a bit surprised that the game isn't even included (though plenty of other software comes preinstalled)." I probably should have been more specific, but I will say more on this in the follow-up article.As far as getting rid of all of the bloatware, I didn't find it to be that difficult. Yes, it took about an hour and several reboots to uninstall all of the extra stuff (Wild Tangent games, McAfee Security Suite, Microsoft Office 2007 trial, etc.) but once done the system ran quite well. It's pretty irritating when I think about how many users will never get around to uninstalling all the extra junk, though.
strikeback03 - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
Considering Toshiba's past problems with overheating notebooks, lots of space for cooling is probably not a bad thing.