Looks good and works great
Written: Nov 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Delivers above and beyond
Cons: Corporate pricing, poor internal speakers
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| toddbauer's Full Review: Toshiba Tecra 8100 (PT810U-12CP7) PC Notebook |
Summary:
These devices deliver quite a punch for the package and are worth every dollar in a corporate environment. The two models I have deployed so far are very stable and make you wish everyone build laptops like these. Definitely a good match with Windows 2000. Finally everything a laptop was supposed to do (high performance, beautiful display, hot-swap, hot-everything, suspend, hibernate) all works flawlessly. As an added bonus, the 8100 line has a fixed platform, so you can develop one software image and use it for the entire line as it matures over time.
Review:
I have had a Toshiba Tecra 8100 for a few months now. I also deployed another unit to another user in the IT department. To make a long story short, I work in a all-Compaq shop, but because of my experience with these units, the next round of laptop upgrades will be Toshiba Tecras. The two units in use are a PIII-850/256MB/20GB/DVD and a PIII-750/128MB/12GB/DVD. The factory supplied set of drivers for Windows 2000 has worked flawlessly and requires no updates. The 750 has crashed only once (because I tried to hot-redock it, one of the few things you can't do) while the 850 has never crashed.
Feature for feature, this line shows how much the Toshiba product line, as well as laptops in general has matured over the years. In days of old (a few years ago), I would ONLY work with IBM Thinkpads. These machines were extremely temperamental to set-up, but once configured, they were solid as a rock. The only software configuration issues I have had with the Tecras can be blamed on Windows 2000, not on the hardware.
Part for part, I like every aspect of this machine. The exterior design looks good. I didn't think it was the most glamorous machine out of the box, but the silver/gray styling has grown on me. The power switch is covered with a little sliding door, preventing accidental power-ons or power-offs. I wish laptops manufacturers had though of this eons ago. Opening up the unit, the display is bright and bold. It measures 14.1" and is very comfortable on the eyes. I use it with a CRT all day at work (1280x1024 on a 20") and many hours at school (1024x768) in the evenings. Often, I watch DVD or Divx movies on this display in the evenings. In other words, I look at this screen many hours a day and have never felt any discomfort.
The keyboard is very responsive, sometimes a little too much. After a couple weeks, I got used to it and now draft documents on it at work and take notes on it at school. It is very comfy on the hands and seems like it will hold up well to the test of time. The pointer is a stick type. When I shop for a laptop, this is the first feature it must have to gain my consideration. Touchpads are nice, but I am still highly biased to the stick pointer from my Thinkpad days. The only improvement Toshiba could have made would be to include both. The mouse buttons include two buttons (up and down) that act as a replacement for the wheel on a wheel mouse. I find I use them a lot since becoming accustomed to using wheel mice.
The PCMCIA slots have worked well with normal and cardbus cards. All have automatically configured under Windows 2000 without a single glitch. The hot-swap features have never crashed this machine, unlike other laptops. You can swap any device in the single bay as long as you notify the machine you are about to do it (with a system tray icon). Also, the docking station has a little slider button that tells the machine to hot-undock. This is absolutely perfect for quickly grabbing the laptop to take it to a meeting. You can't hot-redock it, a reboot is required. Since everything else works so well, I can hardly complain.
Hard drive space is ample at 12GB, although having 20GB is nice because I work with large amounts of data. 128MB of RAM is fine, allowing me to run the whole Office suite at the same time without any problems. The only time the system bogs down is with huge print jobs. 256MB of RAM fixes that right up. Another nice feature is the external case for the floppy drive. Since it is rarely used, I keep it in the external case and connect it only when needed. The DVD drive has taken up permanent residence in the bay.
When manufacturers started putting DVD drives in laptops, it seemed like an extravagance. Now that I have a laptop with one, I will never have it any other way in the future. I now watch movies during lunch break, between college classes, or any moment I have to kill. The display is a perfect compliment to the well-implemented software DVD decoding. I have seen software decoding on many other machines, and believe me, I don't know how they get it to look so good with a total lack of hardware acceleration. As others have noted, the speakers are less than stellar, so I recommend headphones if you want to hear the sound at its best. For most purposes, the internal speakers work fine.
This line does have a fan for cooling the innards, and it does make some noise. However, the DVD drive makes more noise than the fan, so it's not a big deal. About the only time I notice the fan is when it first kicks on.
Battery life is the best I've seen so far. I get over 5 hours in low power mode when taking notes in class. Since not much performance is needed to type notes, it works fine. However, don't bother trying to watch a DVD like that. It really should be plugged in, or sacrifice the whole battery to a single 2-hour movie in a higher power mode. That's not such an issue since the laptop sits in a dock at work and gets a full charge every day.
Another feature to note is the NTSC (TV) out. I carry the NTSC dongle and an audio out to RCA cable with me. This allows me to hook the laptop up to a TV at a friend or relative's house and watch DVD or Divx movies. That may not sound like a big deal, but in essence, those two cables turn the unit into a 5lb entertainment center (minus the speakers and big-screen). VGA out to projector is also nice to display full-resolution DVD on the wall, a feature one can get very accustomed to.
So, while these laptops are not by any means cheap, it gets awesome value for the dollar. First, it gets used 8 hours each day at work. Then it gets used for school notes, papers, and presentations. Third, it is the core of an entertainment center, just attach speakers and screen, or use what's built-in. I'm not a gamer, but if I was, I'm sure it would be the center of many a frag-fest. With the DVD player, VHS tapes seem like a waste of space. I can carry around a collection of movies in less space than a single VHS movie. Paired with Windows 2000, this laptop is everything I imagined a laptop could be, and much more. And no, I don't work for Toshiba. Disregarding laptops, I am still a faithful Compaq fan.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
toddbauer
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Member: Todd Bauer
Reviews written: 1
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