Great notebook, a few minor, but annoying quirks
Written: Nov 16 '99
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Pros: Light, efficient, and DVD Docking station plays great quality video directly to screen or TV
Cons: Poor interoperability with docking station, suspend/resume issues as well
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| adamtraidman's Full Review: Toshiba Portege 7020 |
The 7020 + DVD Docking station is fast and light, but still has a few issues which you should be aware of before you purchase. First of all, I would highly recommend the memory upgrade to 128MB. Running Win98, NT, or Win2K on 64MB of RAM is manageable, but the performance degrades noticeably when using behemoth applications such as Office 2000. Secondly, I would HIGHLY recommend the DVD docking station. The playback quality of DVDs is excellent, and the direct video out support means you can display the DVD directly onto your television. This is a feature I could hardly pass up. However, be forewarned that when the notebook is attached to the docking station, you will experience significant problems whereby the notebook tends to bounce up and down on the connector latch. Essentially the forward latch which connects the notebook to the docking station tends to lose grip quite often. This means the keyboard can bounce as you type, which is quite annoying. In addition, from time to time the notebook may accidentally become undocked, causing loads of problems for Windows. Another issue with the docking station is that depending on what peripherals you are using and what software you have installed, you may not be able to make use of the "undock while on" feature. This is a great feature when it works, so you can undock and not have to shut down your machine. Say you want to run over to another coworker's office with your laptop, you hit the undock button, and then grab your laptop and run over, without having to shut it down. Sounds great, but this feature mysteriously stopped working for me about a month ago, and now I have to shutdown the machine in order to undock it. This is a major hassle. I have also experienced some minor suspend/resume issues, but nothing major. You will notice that the battery life in this laptop however tends to be poor, and if you are considering the long life battery, be forewarned it is 2X the size of the normal one.
Overall, a great machine. Could have used a little more work in the engineering design of the interoperability between the laptop and the docking station.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): Unknown
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium II
Processor speed: 301-400
Screen Size: 14"
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 4-6
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Epinions.com ID:
adamtraidman
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Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 6 members
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