Well, I finally took the plunge and bought this laptop. I was looking to replace my desktop and I looked at various Qosmios and Asus laptops. Based on my research, Toshiba and Asus had the least amount of defects/issues compared to Sony, Dell, HP, and Apple so I wanted to get a laptop from them. Here is the link to the study that was done.
There were four models I researched. Qosmio Q870 and Q877, and the Asus G73JH-RBBX05 and Asus G73JH. Here are key specs
Q870 Price $1190 (on sale at another company since this model is no longer being sold)
Processor I7 720QM
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 360M
Ram 4mb
Display 18.4
Resolution: 16802x945
Bluetooth and Blue Ray
500 HD 7200rpm
4 USB ports including ESATA
Q887 Price $1399 (same specs as teh Q870 except for the processor)
Processor I7 740QM
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 360M
Ram 4mb
Display 18.4
Resolution: 16802x945
Bluetooth and Blue Ray
500 HD 7200rpm
4 USB ports including ESATA
ASUS G73JH-RBBX05 $1299.99
Processor I7 720QM
Video Card ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870
Ram 6mb
Display 17.3
Resolution 1600x900
No Bluetooth, no Blue Ray
500 HD 7200rpm
4 USB ports
Asus G73JH $1329.99
Processor I7 720QM
ATI Mobility(tm) Radeon® HD 5730
Ram 4gb
Display 17.3
Resolution 1600x900
Bluetooth and Blue Ray
640 HD 7200rpm
3 USB ports and 1 3.0 USB ports
I ultimately decided on the Q887 because it had the larger display and faster processor. I wasn't too concern about the 3.0 USB port since the Q887 had the ESATA which is a bit slower, but with the size of the hard drive, I don't think I would be connecting any external hard drive soon. The Q887 also has IEEE (mini firewire) which the ASUS did not, and lastly, the Q887 was available on Amazon, which saved me sales tax. The ASUS was not being fulfilled by Amazon.
When I received the package, it was delivery signature required and of course, UPS didn't show up to my house until 7:20pm Friday night. The laptop only comes with the power outlet, and a resource guide (not a manual), and no recovery disks. And it is quite a large laptop as you are aware since you probably looked at similar Qosmios at various retail stores. After booting up, you go through a few set up screens, including how the laptop would connect to the internet. I chose wireless and it found my wifi immediately, and then I had to enter in the password. Once that was done, it loaded the main window. It takes about 45-60 seconds to boot up from the time you turn it on, enter in your password, and be able to start clicking on programs. There is a little blub buried on the 1 page laptop illustration that says you should create the recovery disk. I had to find out where that program was which didn't take too long to find. It takes 5 DVDs to create the recovery disk, and one other CD or DVD disk to create the repair disk, so 6 disks overall. That took couple of hours to complete. Now I was concerned from what I read on previous models like the Q870, that you needed to update the bios because of issues with coming out of sleep. As of now, I have no such issues with the Q887. Perhaps the newer models has the most current bios already installed. The other complain I heard from people is how hot the laptop gets. Well the place where the hand rests stays cool but the laptop does get a little warm between the speakers. I haven't yet played any intense games so maybe it will get hotter.
One other complaint I heard is the speakers aren't great. I would agree with that. I was hoping to not have to use my external Alec Lansing speakers. The laptop speakers, at full volume, is not really loud so if you have a lot of noise in the house, it will compete with the speakers. Also, there seems to be a lack of bass as well, but this isn't too much of a concern for me since I have the external speakers. I also read that there were tons of bloatware but I really didn't find much at all. It came pretty clean. I did uninstall the trial period for Norton Internet Suite as I use the free Avira Anti Vir, Malwarebytes, and Zonealarm. It did take me quite a while to install all my programs but it seems to install a whole lot faster than on my other computer, which probably is true with the faster processor and additional ram.
I am still getting use to the keyboard. It's fine and having the media controls to the left, I kind of laugh when people said they accidentally touch it when typing or playing games, as I was thinking, it's not that hard to avoid it. Well, the first couple of days, I did the same thing :-). I think it will just be a matter of time before I don't do that anymore. Also, as you may have heard, clicking on the media buttons creates a beep noise. It is kind of loud but you can turn it off by going into the Toshiba Utilities program via the Start Menu, and not having to go into the bios. It doesn't really bother me so I'm leaving it as is for now. I came from Vista so the Win 7 OS is sort of similar but in many ways, quite different so I'm thinking it will take me a week or two to learn the ins and outs of Win 7. I do thoroughly enjoy having the full 10 digit numeric pad. The backlight keyboard is sort of cool but since I'm planning on having a light nearby, I doubt it would be as beneficial to me as it may others who need to work or play in the dark. The performance (window experience) is as follows: Processor 7.1, Ram 7.3, Graphics 6.8, Gaming Graphics 6.8, and harddrive 5.9. When I connected the laptop to the wireless printer, it gave a marginal to good connection, which was weird since the printer was only a few feet from the computer. My XPS which was further away had an excellent connection. Maybe I need to update the wireless driver but right now I can print and that's all that matters.
So I love how fast it boots up compared to my old desktop and my Dell XPS M1330 computer. It is quiet large but I won't be moving it very much, and it does attract fingerprints so have a computer rag near by. Once I start installing games, I'll try to update my comments.
Update: I was able to adjust the speakers via the Control Panel (Smart Audio) and it does have good bass, and the volume is loud enough. The only thing is when I'm playing a song, the volume seems to go high and low, not too bad now since I adjusted settings through Smart Audio but it is noticable. I still have my external speakers so still not a biggie for me. I wish I bought this a week later as Amazon lowered the price to $1299 and I bought it at $1399 on Amazon. I haven't used the touchpad or buttons since I have an external USB mouse. One other thing is the headphone plug in, I personally do not like where it is on the right side of the laptop as my external speaker wire sticks out and gets in the way of my mouse so sometimes I use the laptop speakers and other times I use the external speakers when I'm just listening to music. And so far, no problems whatsoever.
Update 11/7 Simond from another site seem to have a fix for the sound going up and down when playing a song. Here it is and it seems to work.
To work with the issue with the issue i will ask you to follow the below given step. This is the problem related to the sound enhancement that can be sorted out with the help of the Enhancement Tab.
Right Click on Sound icon from taksbar
Click on Playback device
Select Speaker
Click on Properties
Go to Enhancement Tab
Checked the "Disable all enhancements"
Thats it!!!!
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Just got it today and I updated the windows and installed Starcraft 2 (the real reason why I purchased this laptop). It's so so sweet. I'm playing Starcraft on ... high? NOPE. It's running on ULTRA with no problems. Actually, the graphics look so crisp and clear that it's kind of hard to see where your units are because they blend into the reflections and shadows of the surrounding so well. Haven't had a lot of units on screen, thanks to my SC skills, so I haven't seen if it causes the laptop to lag or not. I have a Macbook Pro and the bottom gets hot, so I order a laptop cooler for this laptop just in case (hasn't arrive yet). This laptop doesn't feel hot yet though. Not after 2 hours of SCing. Anyways, it's about 20lbs so I wouldn't put it on my lap anyways, if you're concerned about that.
Pros: Fast; everything pre-installed; excellent "pc." I say PC because this laptops way faster than my current gaming PC, granted, the gaming PC is 5 years old and a lot cheaper. Speakers are awesome. You can feel the vibrations flowing through the laptop. I moved the laptop a little and this HDD protection thing went off. With these huge speakers, I'm surprise that HDD protection thing doesn't go off more often due to the vibration from the speakers. I feel like I need to break in the speakers, they're that big and loud!
Cons: The audio buttons on the left side ... I have hit it a few times playing SC. You know, using the CTRL+number to assign groups. Or even while ALT+tabbing. Why didn't they put it on the right side, after the num pad? Or above the top? I don't know. Anyways, I've just been hitting the volume buttons, no biggie. Of course, extra Toshiba/Etc. software. I deleted some. Some might be useful, who knows? I'll run a few of them later to see. I use a wireless mouse instead of the touch pad. But from my short usage of the touch pad... it seems small. The one on my Macbook Pro is like three times bigger. Anyways, because I'll be using this laptop for gaming, I'll need a mouse, so it's not an issue to me. You can turn the touchpad on and off with a button right above the touch pad, if you wanted to know.
Pro or Con, your choice: This laptop is massive! You've probably need a backpack or suitcase to transport it. I knew 18.4" was big but damn, once you see it, it's freaking huge. It's be like carrying a 20" LCD TV around with you. Compared to the Qosmio 890, this one only has 4 GB of memory (and no SSD, it's a small SSD anyways, so who cares.). Haven't had a problem with my gaming ... anyways, I was playing to upgrade to 8 GB later anyways, but only if there was a game requiring it. Why buy extra memory if you don't need it?
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When I first got the laptop, it crashed on a daily basis due to problems with the NVIDIA drivers. I did some research on the net and found some help from someone called XACTXX on the NVIDIA forum. I don't know if Amazon will allow the link, so I'll copy and paste the solution in case any other purchasers have the same issue:
"The problem lies with the Toshiba Windows 7 theme that comes pre-installed with the laptop, which somehow conflicts with the graphics card. This is why most laptops that get this error are indeed Toshiba ones!
So all you need to do is the following:
1) Right-click on an empty space in your desktop, and click on 'Personalize'.
2) Choose the 'Windows 7 Basic' theme. Make sure you do not choose any of the Aero or Toshiba themes.
3) Click on OK.
You should now not get any more NVIDIA Display Kernel crashes."
And he was correct! I went from sometimes 2 or 3 crashes a day to no crashes in 2 weeks.
My one complaint about this computer is the speakers. The sound (quality and volume) is better than on my Toshiba Satellite, but it keeps going up and down when I'm playing music. Weird. I see that someone else solved the issue with external speakers, but I think for a computer in this price range, having to buy extra speakers to get sound volume that remains constant is rather annoying.
The touch pad also sucks, but I use a wireless mouse, so that doesn't bother me.
Other than those negatives, it's great, fast, and performs well. It's been 3 weeks, and so far so good. (And it's now $200 cheaper than what I paid:-))
Honest reviews on Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q887 TruBrite 18.4-Inch Laptop (Black/Red)
I bought mine 3 weeks ago and have not found any cons. I'm still looking. This machine is a beast!!!!
Now dual boot Win7 & ubuntu 10.04. This machine is just awesome. I thought having 4g of ram would impact -vely
on me burning DVD and playing warcraft frozen throne, watching Avi movie and running a robust application in netbeans.
There was not even a glitch!!!!!
So i will not upgrade to 6G memory.
This machine is great!
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I have been using mine almost daily for two weeks.
PROS:
Very fast computer. I've been playing StarCraft II with all settings on High, while running other programs in the background, and it plays very smoothly, and it runs cool too which is a big plus for a gaming laptop. Because it supports wireless N and I have a wireless N router, it has a faster network connection than my old laptop with wireless G. It is a very good looking laptop. I don't find it very heavy for a laptop. My old, smaller laptop is almost just as heavy so I'm used to it. The screen is large, bright and very clear. There are many other nice features I could list. I did my research before buying a gaming laptop and this one gives you the best for your money.
CONS:
Out of the box, it has a bright blue, stuck pixel in the middle of the screen. I try to ignore it, but it's very annoying. I have tried the different "stuck pixel removal methods" found on the Internet, but I have not been able to remove it. Sometimes these stuck pixels fix themselves. I started to return the laptop because of this, but I read on the Toshiba website that the warranty covers only 4 or more dead or stuck pixels. According to Amazon's return policy, they will refund only 85% of the sale price of a computer that has already been opened. I was afraid to exchange it for another one because the replacement might have more serious problems than a single stuck pixel. BTW, the difference between a dead pixel and a stuck pixel is that a dead pixel is OFF all the time and looks black on a white screen, while as stuck pixel is ON all the time and it looks blue, red, green, etc., on a black or very dark screen.
There is a problem with the speakers too, where the volume constantly goes up and down. It is not noticeable when playing games, but it is very noticeable and annoying if listening to music. This doesn't bother me too much since I rarely use my laptop to listen to music.
Other than these two small problems, it is a great laptop for the price and I recommend it.
