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  • Jmegapac - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    If you don't mind a Dell, I'd consider Dell Vostro 3450. It has the same configuration as the Toshiba laptop mentioned above except for a) Radeon HD 6630M, b) 320GB 7200RPM HDD, c) DVD writer instead of Bluray drive.

    It does have backlight keyboard and a fingerprint reader.

    I believe the total cost is around $780 or so excluding tax. If you can find a Dell coupon, you should be able to reduce the price even further.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    Thanks -- I've added a mention in the conclusion. Not seeing the $780 price for those features, though; where did you find that? I'm coming up with $964 at the time of writing, though perhaps you're talking about using a Dell business account to get a lower price?
  • Eidorian - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I remember Laptop Magazine had a link through Logic Buy that discounted $220 the Vostro 3450 back in early April. It was rather tempting to get one of those with a Radeon 6630M and a three year warranty for $779.
  • ekerazha - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    About upcoming 14-inch notebooks with Sandy Bridge and a more powerful NVIDIA GPU (I've had too much issues with ATI GPUs), I'm aware of:

    - Acer Aspire TimelineX 4830T (GT 540M), but some reviews say that it has overheating/throttling issues and poor build quality.

    - Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 (GT 550M), but only 4 hours of battery life?

    - Asus U41SV (GT 540M)

    Unfortunately I think that they lack backlit keyboard.

    Did I miss any other notebook?
  • LoneWolf15 - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    You missed the main trifecta of business laptops, though they are now available for order.

    Dell Latitude E6420
    Lenovo ThinkPad T420

    The HP EliteBook 8460p has ATI Radeon Mobility 6470 graphics, but to me it qualifies as well. nVidia isn't without its issues on the mobile graphics front either.

    Both the Dell and Lenovo can have Optimus graphics. The Lenovo is lighter, and smaller; the Dell probably has better customer support. Both are built toughter than the models you mentioned, though. The Dell can have a backlit keyboard, and the ThinkPad has its ThinkLight which can shine down on the keyboard to illuminate it, and works well.
  • royalewihcheese - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    It's a pretty frustrating time to be in the market for a notebook. My previous one just bit the dust, and I'm on a five year old Acer now during the search. They're really dragging on getting Sandy Bridge notebooks to market, and when trying to browse for them, they're all grouped in with the older Core i3/i5/i7 models. It seems like there's a total lack of interest in putting out new notebooks.

    How much stock do you guys put in the Squaretrade reliability ratings? I've been happy with my two Acers, the last failure being the result of four years of pretty rough use, and they're rated pretty dismally there. Is it worth holding out for an ASUS (which I have a good impression of from using their motherboards for decades) or Toshiba (decidedly less favorable impression) to put out the dream-specced notebook?
  • jabber - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    ...all the stickers?

    Note ot manufacturers (including Microsoft) I really dont care or want them on my laptop!

    Just makes your products look cheaper out on the shelves, not smarter or better.

    Joe Average user doesnt have a clue what most of those "Turbo Boost" "Sonic Tunnel" i5" strickers mean anyway.
  • Ushio01 - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    WD40 is your friend here, it easily removes the loathsome sticky residue after you peel off all those annoying stickers.
  • jabber - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    Oh its not the taking off that bothers me its just they look so damn ugly and tacky stuck all over the chassis.

    You dont see that crap stuck all over Macbooks so why do it on non Mac kit?

    A simple spec sheet on the store shelf will do.

    Also most kit is probably bought online so it makes them even more pointless.
  • erple2 - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link

    Perhaps that's part of the Macintax - no labels costs a little bit more?
  • Icabus - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I don't know if I speak for everyone, but I would love to see 2 additional graphs. On the performance page a graph showing the current price, or price range for the other comparable offerings would be nice so you could see what kind of performance increase you are getting for the increase in price. I know this would not be easy as the price can very across the internet, and I understand price can change with rebates and sales all the time.

    The other graph is a little easier, but on the power usage page I would love to see the weight here. Since the different offerings come with different size batteries, it would be nice to see just how much of a difference there is between to offerings when on has a 4xWHr battery and another has a 8xWHr battery.
  • Chris Peredun - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    "NVIDIA specifies the 525M to run the core at 600MHz (and thus the 96 CUDA cores at 1.2GHz), but Toshiba has substantially reduced its core clock to just 475MHz (reducing the CUDA cores to a paltry 950MHz). The cut is a brutal one that you'll see reduces performance below even a GeForce GT 420M."

    Thanks for highlighting this issue on page 1, Dustin.

    In a dream world, NVIDIA would come kick them in the groin and tell them not to label or refer to the GPU in this unit as a "GT 525M" when it is *not obeying specs.*

    Is there a particular reason we can't have that dream come true? I'm sure there's some country where a "false advertising" suit would land a hit.
  • Pessimism - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I'd love to see a "durability roundup" in which you take all the $699 budget wonder notebooks and put them through a series of impacts, drops, and spills followed by a photographed teardown detailing internal damage to see how these mass produced plastic consumer notebooks stand up to abuse.
  • TegiriNenashi - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    With processors, memory and the other stuff stagnated these days perhaps it makes sense for vendors to differentiate on their screen offering. Is it hard to comprehend how many users can't stand 16:9?
  • jah1subs - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    You can complain all you want about 16:9 and it will make absolutely no difference. Several years ago, I noticed a story on digitimes.com that said panel manufacturers realized that they could lay out more 16:9 panels than 16:10 panels in later generation manufacturing plants, perhaps 6th generation. The difference was 5% or 10%

    I have a question. For those who have seen 14" or 15.6" panels, is 1600x900 more or less readable than 1366x768, all other things being equal (ceteris paribus)?

    P.S. ceteris paribus is correctly spelled. I searched it before posting the message.
  • kmmatney - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    "I have a question. For those who have seen 14" or 15.6" panels, is 1600x900 more or less readable than 1366x768, all other things being equal (ceteris paribus)?"

    The answer is: 16:9 sucks
  • AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, April 30, 2011 - link

    Readable? Bigger will always be more readable! The trade off is workspace.

    btw, the poster didn't even "complain" about 16:9. But I will: it sucks :) And if 1 manufacturer still offered 15.4" 1680x1050 or 14.1" 1400x1050, it would be a huge differentiator and there's a good chance they'd get my business. Make it IPS, too. I'll happily pay the premium.
  • Letros - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    Hey guys, long time reader first time poster, great site BTW =)

    I have a similar model of this laptop, the customized M640, didn't care for the Blu-ray player on the retail model, so I saved a few bucks, while opting for a back-lit keyboard, 7200 HDD, and extended cell battery, came out to $920.

    Anyway, I was pretty upset myself when I saw the GT525M at 475 Mhz, however Nvidia System Tools lets you bring the clock back up, I actually have it overclocked at 630/950, up from the 525M spec sheet of 600/900. My GPU temps don't get above 80 C and the laptop does a good job at cooling(had it running for a few hours to confirm stability). My 3dMark 06 was 7600 marks. I don't play too many games on it though, have a desktop for that, but it's nice for some mobile SC2.

    I'm satisfied with my purchase, even with the BS clock reduction, a higher res screen would have been nice...
  • TrackSmart - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    Good to know that the clock speed is easily modified and that it stays within reasonable temperature limits (for a GPU running at full tilt in a laptop). I don't do any mobile gaming, so I opted for the Portege series (only 3.2 lbs). I also lament the low resolution, low quality displays that Toshiba uses, but I couldn't find any alternatives in the same price range and weight.
  • Beenthere - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I'm not gonna buy any InHell product after their criminal convictions.
  • james.jwb - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    There are plenty of corporations that behave exactly the same, in fact most do. Prepare to buy amost nothing ever again on that position. But i do agree with your general theme, it's just i can think are far worse companies to get angry with than intel, so i hope you have also informed yourself on some of those and are staying away, like coca cola, for instance.
  • bji - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I will never read a notebook review past those awful, horrendous display specs. Which cuts out alot of reviews.
  • alephxero - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    Any word on when HP plans of releasing the Sandy Bridge update to their Envy14 line? I know the 17-inch models have had it for awhile now.
  • TrackSmart - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    This keyboard looks suspiciously similar to the keyboards on the Toshiba Portege series laptops, yet the Porteges don't have backlit keyboards. It makes you wonder why their high-end ultraportable models are lacking this feature.
  • LoneWolf15 - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I don't call the glossy plastic still there, or the lack of a 1600x900 display or Intel wireless for a grand progress. My ThinkPad T420 didn't cost a lot more (it would have cost less had I skipped Optimus graphics) and I got all of those and a real Intel gig NIC instead of Realtek. I also got the extra features of a Core i5-2520M processor.

    The one thing I didn't get that the Toshiba has is Blu-Ray, but to me, that's a questionable need. I'd rather carry video around on my hard drive instead of discs.

    Jared, does the Toshiba still have the insane amount of bloatware (mostly in the form of multiple utilities, each taking the form of an individual executable rather than a few unified control-center type apps) they used to have? I found that highly annoying in the past, because it was extremely hard to tell what you did and didn't need, and the apps munched heavily into RAM because of the number of them.
  • Maccollector - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    I might buy one of these as they don't look like too shabby. It is a bit pricey for what I would use it for though. I would definitely prefer a faster hard drive though. Thanks for the review!
  • yyrkoon - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    If you're going to review a product, and compare it to others, you really should have some hands on with what you're comparing it to. Your guiding light seems to be performance, and features. Despite obviously never have laid hands on what you suggest as alternatives.

    What good is a feature, if the system using said feature is either quirky, or just completely unstable. Is having GbE eithernet more important than having drivers for every version of windows since Windows XP ? Probably, because that Sony VAIO you suggest is going to be down so often, you're going to need it to make up for lost time.

    Anyway, yes, if you're going to claim something is better than another, googling prices vs features is not going to cut it.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, April 30, 2011 - link

    So, um, "There are two laptops we'd seriously consider in the 14-inch market." And, "There you have it: six viable alternatives, but none of them comes off clearly superior in every category." Having not had a chance to review the Sony (or any of the other alternatives, other than the Dell XPS 15), we wouldn't actually states something is better or worse -- just an alternative to consider.

    As for your complaints, have you actually used the Sony we mentioned, or have you just had a bad experience with Sony in general? Because if it's the latter, you're doing even less than "googling prices vs. features". I can't find a good review of the Signature Collection C Series at present, but I wouldn't suggest Sony's consumer laptops are any worse than Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, etc. offerings. It looks reasonably nice at least, so maybe I'll see about looking around local stores to get an idea of what they're like in person.
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link

    No I have not put hands to that given model. However after being in the business of repairing systems for a living. You come to realize there are brand names that are reasonably consistent, and those that are not.

    After that. Go to Toshiba's website, and look at any laptop driver list. Every_single_driver_for_any_OS_since_WinXP. That is, concerning Windows. It does not matter if the laptop was a $400 budget model or not. *That* is what I call pride in a brand name. Have you ever tried retrograding/upgrading an Operating system on a Sony laptop ? To put it nicely, it is a very inconsistent experience. Acer, also is very inconsistent from my experiences.. But Dell, and HP both usually are decent so long as the "normal wear and tear" did not include treating the laptop as a Frisbee, or football. Most are not built with this in mind.

    Stability is a personal major concern. As I believe it is for anyone. However, after reading some of the reviews of this site. Apparently performance, and features matters more( to you ). Yes, yes, we all buy something because it has something we want. This is understood, and implied. However, if laptop-a is not consistently stable, but has GbE, where another laptop(laptop-b) is rock solid stable, but only has fast ethernet. Does that make laptop-a "better". No, it makes laptop-a *potentially* faster in networking. Assuming you can keep the system up long enough to use that luxury.

    The funny thing here, is that most of the time, GbE is no where near as fast as it should be. Even after protocol overhead. Most of the time, GbE ethernet on a home network runs at about 20-30% of its full capacity. Which as it turns out is 2-3x as fast as a good performing 100Mbit network. The average user would be better off transferring large amounts of data over USB2, or firewire. I would say eSATA, but eSATA can be very flaky from one device to the next. Sadly.

    So anyway. When this user gets ready to research a product for himself, a friend, or customer. Reading your reviews has nothing to do with the decision. Frankly, newegg user reviews offers more in that respect. If that fact cuts deep, then be glad in knowing you can do something about it. If not, then maybe you think I am a racist, or something, Since that seems to be the trend lately for anyone who does not agree with another's methods.
  • randinspace - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link

    Right when SB came out Toshiba crept a few i7 models (with a nvidia card, though which one fails me) into retail stores with the 15.6" version of that chasis for $900. It didn't have blu-ray and I didn't care, and US 3.0 would have been nicer than eSATA for me but I snagged it anyway. Then it was recalled. Then my ancient laptop stopped working and since I needed SOMETHING I picked up a heavily discounted MSI notebook (not netbook...) with AMD's E-350 in it and uh... I kind of wish I'd taken my chances with the eSATA failing on me at some point and kept the Toshiba. Mostly because of the horrible screen on this laptop which actually has NO viewing angle no matter how much I tinker with the Catalyst Control Center, but it also somehow started trying to boot from my external hard drive and I barely figured out how to stop it from doing that before having to take it back.

    Eh hem sorry to vent there, it's just been a stupid year for me and laptops. At least this thing doesn't have a tendency to freeze when I have Word 07, Chrome, and Foobar2000 open like my old laptop would. At the end of the day that's all that matters, right? Now if only I could do something about the 'A' key's tendency to not register my presses...
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link

    Sadly, as you found out. eSATA from one device/system to the next is very inconsistent.

    Personally, I was in the market for something eSATA. But after reading through all the woes on user reviews (newegg) about the current state of eSATA hardware. I was "forced" to realize that USB3 is the only real option. It is a shame though, as eSATA has a few pretty nice options to offer. Connecting to a RAID array through a port multiplier would be one.

    USB3 is not however a bad option. 5Gbit/s should be more than enough to keep up with any plater based HDD. Worse case scenario I've read that you double your speed when compared to USB2. Some claim 100MB/s when using one HDD( which I personally find dubious ). I would be happy with a consistent 50-60MB/s though.

    Anyway, this might not do you any good now, for your current problem. But keep in mind that in the future, Assuming the state of current eSATA hardware stays the same. You could have used that expresscard on your laptop to put in an expresscard ->USB3 card and bought a USB3 enclosure for under $60 USD. Here, I am assuming your system did come with an expresscard slot ( which many Toshibas do ). Also, for all intents and purposes where performance is concerned, expresscard slots are in effect a mini PCIe slot. 1.5Gbit/s throughput potential.
  • gte343z - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link

    Has anyone reviewed the lenovo e420s, It would seem to be a good competitor to the m645 in terms of price / features, although they haven't released the version with hd6630m graphics yet in the U.S.

    I'm looking for something in the 13/14" <4.5lbs range and am not that impressed. The mac air / mbp 13 have nice screens but slow processor / no discrete graphics accordingly, not to mention the high price. Still competition is lacking given the subpar screens from other vendors.

    Also how usable is the 1366x768 screen size? I'm used to my hp 8530w 15.4" 1920x1200 screen and am concerned this will be a deal breaker.

    Any thoughts are appreciated.
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