Toshiba Laptop on sale for $399 @ BestBuy

Nice deal. I'd bite if I weren't holding out for a dual core notebook.
 
Wow.. nice deal.. It's gonna be hard to resist :( ... I wonder how that Radeon 200M chip would do in games..
 
Danith said:
Wow.. nice deal.. It's gonna be hard to resist :( ... I wonder how that Radeon 200M chip would do in games..
Click to expand...

It's the mobile version of the Radeon X300. It also happens to be Vista-capable, though that machine needs another 768MB of RAM to be fully Vista-capable.
 
It's marked as "Sold Out" on the BB website, as of 11am Sunday. Anyone know if it's available in local BB stores?
 
djspe said:
It's marked as "Sold Out" on the BB website, as of 11am Sunday. Anyone know if it's available in local BB stores?
Click to expand...

It's suppose to be available in the stores too.

I just happened to be shopping for a laptop yesterday, when I met someone who had a copy of the ad for it some how, so I knew it was coming. So I waited until it was officially announced on BB's web site. That's when I posted it here.

.
 
i was able to get one for 478 after tax and adding another 256 meg stick.
512 is plenty since i just got this for my wife for school.

i got there around 10:05am and waited in line, they had about 15-20 of these easily.
when i got mine there were 3 left, and about 9-10 people behind me still.
 
I got to the BB store near me at around 9:15, expecting a line already. Surprising, there was no line, so I waited in my car until about 9:45, when someone finally went up to the door to start waiting. So I went and joined him.

When the store opened, there were only five of us. They had eleven. Cost, $435.19 w/tax.

Got home and started cleaning out the bloatware, such as AOL, Quicken, etc.

This laptop only comes w/256 mb of memory, which I've got to expand. It's just way too slow w/o more memory.

Other than that, it's a nice laptop, especially for the price. ;)


.
 
SJetski71 said:
While that is definitely a good deal on an acer notebook, BB's toshiba has a larger 15.4" trubrite screen but the Acer does come with 512megs of ram.

Some tradeoffs with either choice but both are great deals imho.
Click to expand...

That Acer also has the Intel Graphics chipset while the Toshiba has the ATI.
 
GoHack said:
That Acer also has the Intel Graphics chipset which the Toshiba has the ATI.
Click to expand...

is the compusa acer on sale? the site shows 649
it's comparable spec wise but unless it's on sale for 399 like the toshiba @ best buy
this is no comparison.
 
stag3 said:
is the compusa acer on sale? the site shows 649
it's comparable spec wise but unless it's on sale for 399 like the toshiba @ best buy
this is no comparison.
Click to expand...

It doesn't appear to be. I don't know why BBowermaster posted it as being on sale.
 
They said sold out on the website when I checked at 11:00 AM. I called a couple local best buys and they still had some in stock.

I went and picked one up. I'm using it right now. It's a great looking machine with a great looking LCD. Much better looking LCD than my Dell d600 I have at work. The native res is 1280x800 but it's got a gloss coating and clarity that are VERY attractive.

The machine seems plenty fast even with 256 megs of ram of which only 192 is listed in the my computer machine profile.
(ram shared with video card)

I didn't think that Best Buy would have a decent price on RAM, so when I got home I immediately ordered a 256 MB kingston stick of ddr2 PC4200 RAM from New egg for $33.98 shipped. My price out the door was 429.xx + and additional 34 from new egg = $464. A really nice price for what you get. I would really recommend this laptop to anyone who is intersted if they can still pick one up at the store!
 
yea actually i thought the same thing, that best buy would kill the deal with the ram prices, but they had a special going on with the laptop, 29.99 for the matching 256 meg stick, regular price on the ram was 39.99. they arlready sold out of the 512 stick on sale at 49.99 from 69.99 by the time i got my laptop.
 
CEpeep said:
It's the mobile version of the Radeon X300. It also happens to be Vista-capable, though that machine needs another 768MB of RAM to be fully Vista-capable.
Click to expand...



If you guys didn't get one of these laptops, well, be happy... as a loyal bby employee for years, i can tell you in about 4 months, every one of these laptops will be back in the store, or in toshiba's service center. The last cheap 400 dollar toshiba's we sold, all overheated, all came back... the averatec's before them, motherboard woe's...



also, we installed vista on a laptop that was "vista capable" with an x200, 1gb ram, with a turion 64 in it.... yea...

vista capable = will install, but run like utter crap
 
I went and bought 2 gb of a matched pair of Kingston Value Ram memory from a local Fry's store for $139.99, plus tax. That 256 mb that it came w/was way too little to do anything.

So that should help it a little. For one, w/only one stick of memory, your running single channel, while w/two, it's suppose to run dual channel.

.
 
Verge said:
If you guys didn't get one of these laptops, well, be happy... as a loyal bby employee for years, i can tell you in about 4 months, every one of these laptops will be back in the store, or in toshiba's service center. The last cheap 400 dollar toshiba's we sold, all overheated, all came back... the averatec's before them, motherboard woe's...



also, we installed vista on a laptop that was "vista capable" with an x200, 1gb ram, with a turion 64 in it.... yea...

vista capable = will install, but run like utter crap
Click to expand...

For $400, I guess it's worth the risk. Hopefully that won't happen w/these.
 
fine -

they have a 1 year warranty...If it's going to break I hope it DOES break in 4 months. So that I can get it fixed under warranty.
 
Stockton has 5 left, Hawthorne had 6 left as of 5:00 PM today.

SD (all 3 locations) are all out.
 
GoHack said:
It doesn't appear to be. I don't know why BBowermaster posted it as being on sale.
Click to expand...

It was on sale for $399, but I guess that was last week. My bad. Though, it seems the $399 sale may be something we'll see happen often, so who knows, maybe another store will have one on sale at the same price next week.

P.S. To the BBY guy saying you installed Vista, most beta builds have all features on and doesn't 'scale' to fit the computer's specs, so of course it will run like crap.
 
They had this same deal a few months back and I got 3 of them... returned them all after a week. It was cool cause I pin modded it and it ran at 2. something gig. I was going to sell the other two on fleabay, but it got too saturated and people actually started to lose money so I said screw the risk... the one I pin modded screen had a line through the center... (before I attempted to pin mod). Oh well... good luck to you guys that get it this time around.
 
For those who may be interested w/the Toshiba A105:

After loading up w/the 2 gb of memory, the shared video memory went up to 128 mb.

Sisoft 2007 Benchmarks:

Memory- 2061 Int, 2054 Float
CPU- 5482 Dhr, 4093 Whet
Hard Drive- 33 mb/sec Drive Index, 21 ms Random Access


Doing some benchmarks, w/the stock video driver setup:

3DMark01- 3264
3DMark03- 893
3DMark05- 538
AquaMark- 9340

Replaced the stock video driver w/the latest Omega ATI v3.8.252:

3DMark01- 4309
3DMark03- 1211
3DMark05- 582
AquaMark- 10799

Not big increase w/the Omega video driver, but an increase non the less.

.
 
so it's not really a gaming machine at all

lol - 3000 3dmark2001

Well...oh well - still a fantastic price for an overall decent laptop. I'm still glad I purchased it. One should use desktops for gaming anyway!
 
Archaea said:
so it's not really a gaming machine at all

lol - 3000 3dmark2001

Well...oh well - still a fantastic price for an overall decent laptop. I'm still glad I purchased it. One should use desktops for gaming anyway!
Click to expand...

It should be better than the Intel based graphics though. ;)

Plus, due to the price, your more apt to do some hardware tweaking, or replacing, such as w/the cpu, either trying the pin mod on it, or replacing it for a Pentinum M processor, which is pin compatable. Of course I don't know if these will work w/this chipset yet. They do w/the Intel chipset models. The ATI Radeon Xpress 200 does support an FSB of up to 667 MHz. I'm presently researching it.

There are directions given here for getting to the cpu and removing it on the Toshiba A105: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=968892

For those who don't know, the pin mod changes the FSB from 400 MHz to 533. So w/a successful pin mod, the 390 goes from 1.70 GHz to 2.26 Ghz.

The 1.7 GHz Pentinum M 735 (400 Mhz), which should be the same as the Celeron 390 in our A105's, but w/a full 2 mb cache, as well as other features, shut off or removed in the 390, is running at $100 on ebay. They have faster M 7x5 models too, as well as the M 7x0's. The 7x5's run w/an FSB of 400 MHz, while the 7x0's run w/an FSB of 533. If the pin mod works on this laptop, then the M 7x5's should work too.

Then you can also add a faster 7200 rpm HD, such as the Hitachi's.

When that's all done, you'll still be well under $1000, and have a pretty fast laptop.

.
 
Be vary careful, of your power connector. Many Toshiba models have had issues with the power recepticle on the motherboard becoming loose. I don't know if this model has the same issues, but if you notice that your notebook isn't charging when the connector is inserted and it requires a slight tweak to the connector in order for the battery to charge, get the power connector on the motherboard replaced immediately by Toshiba. Mine didn't start having issues until a few months after the warranty expired.
 
what'd you figure out go hack about the laptop mainboard being able to support the newer chip?
 
Archaea said:
what'd you figure out go hack about the laptop mainboard being able to support the newer chip?
Click to expand...

It's not a newer chip. The Celeron M's are the Pentium M's w/a 400 MHz FSB, but w/some features shut off. The L2 is 1 mb on the Celeron M also vs. the 2 mb on the Pentium M.

I haven't really had a chance to look into it this week. I did some postings, but w/no replies.

I was told that PC2-5300 (667 FSB) memory should work on this laptop, and for the heck of it, I did try it. No luck. :(

I would of like to have invested in the faster 667, rather than the 533, even if there wasn't a performance gain, as a future investment, since all the new hardware coming out is supporting it.

The fastest that can be used w/this laptop is PC2-4200 (533 FSB), which I'm running, w/no problems. This laptop has an FSB of 400 MHz.

Without having any PC2-3200 (400 FSB) memory to test, I don't know if the PC2-4200 provides any advantages.

Running the Sandra Lite 2007 memory benchmark, w/all power saving features off, I did find that even w/both memory slots filled w/matching memory, that it's only running in single channel, and not dual. I thought the Intels, using DDR2 memory, could run in dual channel, unless the Celeron M's have that feature shut off.

.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top