[Compusmurf]

Qosmio X505-850
Processor
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Memory
6GB DDR3 1066MHz memory

Display Size
18.4" widescreen

Display Type
FHD TruBrite® TFT LCD Display

Display Resolution
1920x1080, Supports 1080p content

Graphics Engine
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 250M
1GB GDDR5 discrete graphics memory

Hard Drive
384GB: 64GB SSD (Serial ATA) + 320GB (7200rpm, Serial ATA)

Secondary Hard Drive Size
320GB 2nd HDD

Optical Drive
Blu-ray Disc™ ROM and DVD SuperMulti drive (+/-R double layer) with Labelflash®

Webcam
Webcam and microphone built into LCD bezel

Wireless
Realtek® Wireless LAN (802.11b/g/n)
Bluetooth® V2.1 + EDR

Inputs and Controls
CD/DVD Buttons (Play/Pause, Stop, Prev Track, Next Track), 104 key US LED backlit keyboard with 10-key pad, Media button, Mute button, eco (Energy-saving mode) button, TouchPad™ pointing device with multi touch control

Battery
High Capacity Li-Ion (8000mAh, 12-Cell)
Battery Life Up to 3.3 hours

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Above are the official specs.

I was due a new laptop and upon research, I came across this model. It had “mostly” everything I was looking for. I preordered it BEFORE the 22nd and it arrived the afternoon OF the 22nd. The one I purchased was the Qosmio x505-850.

Everything is as described by Toshiba above.

Waiting for UPS to arrive was killer, but finally my new machine showed up. It came in a “thin” long box. Upon opening the box, was a quick reference sheet, a few small manuals and the laptop and power supply. I opened it up, inspected it for damage. All good.  That’s when I noticed how “HUGE” it is. I’m coming from a Toshiba X205 Sli3 series which is a 17” notebook. It’s dimensions were almost 15 ¾” wide, 11 1/2” deep and 2 ½” tall closed. This one is 17 ½” wide, 11 ½” deep and not even 1 ½” tall closed. It’s almost 2” wider and it’s noticable. Wide enough to fit a full size, but flat kayboard with number pad on there.

Afterwards, I set it up and powered it on. All good so far. As mentioned in my short review, the first thing I did was look around then make the 5 DVD’s of the Toshiba Software. 3 recovery, 1 boot and 1 driver DVD. After that was done, I had to poke around. Toshiba still installs a lot of junk and the tiny 64GB SSD drive had 10Gb taken up with just the recovery junk. I have several 500Gb, 7200rpm drives lying around so I knew that everything Toshiba did, I would be undoing.

After glancing at the drivers installed, I shut it down and started taking parts off. The bottom covers aren’t labeled, so I just started unscrewing. First item found, 64GB SSD drive, oops. 2nd cover, I found the 320Gb hard drive and removed it replacing it with my Seagate 500Gb/7200rpm drive.

Next, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (x64) from Technet subscription I own. Why use premium when I have ultimate?  The 64Gb SSD got partitioned into a single drive at this point so as not to waste the other 10GB space.

Afterwards, I used the handy driver CD and installed back all the drivers but skipping “crap” like their Skype, MS Works, etc. At this point, I’m trying to keep all drivers on the SSD, but all APPS installed on the larger 500Gb drive I installed. EVERY driver installed but 1. For some reason it no longer detects the Webcam. I don’t use this feature, so I’m not concerned. If you’re doing it “my way” and you use the camera, you’re warned.

I installed Nvidia drivers 191.07 from laptopvideo2go.com.

After all this, I spent the time installing all my applications, Vmware, MS Office and everything else I use daily. I was pre-prepared for this. I made a list, downloaded everything I needed and had it ready. By 7pm I could give it a real shakedown.

Coming from a dual processor w/4GB system, it was really awesome to see 8! Processors show up. Ok, 4 are the HT “processors” but windows doesn’t seem to know that. 6GB ram should give me breathing room while using VMWare as well.

I used it for a few days before posting my comments. I hope to run some benchmarking software as well. Here are some general comments and observations:
[tab]o The video card isn’t bad. I was able to play games at ultra high res mode that I’ve never been able to do before.
[tab]o The shiny, almost carbon fiber looking case coveriing everything is a huge fingerprint magnet.
[tab]o The touchpad is integrated right into the case. It’s supposed to have multitouch and a few other features, but since I use a regular keyboard and mouse, I’ll probably never find out.
[tab]o The buttons and red accents are like mirrored aluminum paint. Looks decent, but not sure long term usage.
[tab]o Keyboard. Hmmm. Many won’t like it. VERY flat keys. For a fast typist, they will NOT be happy. REALLY cool backlighting tho. In a pinch, it works, but this machine is REALLY a desktop replacement. Most users would have a fullsize keyboard and mouse.
[tab]o There’s a series of media touch buttons on the left side. They aren’t REAL buttons, more like touchpad areas. If you brush one with any part of your hand or anything else, they BEEP even with volume muted. I set my Logitech BT Dinovo keyboard up there when I’m not using it and it’s getting extremely annoying to me.
[tab]o The BD/DVD eject button is at the very base of the drive which is nearly UNDER the computer and hard to press.
[tab]o Audio ports are on the RIGHT side of the computer, I’ll miss having them on the front. Along with that, no volume wheel either. Volume controls are now one of those previously mentioned annoying side touch buttons.

Some of these items probably won’t bother most of you, but in my job, I will have to use this machine 8-10 hours a day plus however many hours I will use it for personal use as well.
The only major downfall is the Realtek WiFi card is SLOW to associate, has B, G and N (No A, no N on A frequencies, etc) My mapped drives and connection sometimes aren’t ready for me at the point the machine is ready for me to login after reboot. I have a dual router where N channel can be on the A band and this cheapo card can't do it yet the $39 special at Best Buy can.

[Compusmurf]

I've had several "requests" for benchmarks and stuff at another forum and before you all start asking here, let me toss in my $0.03 (with inflation)

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I have NO benchmarking tools that seem to work at this time. I don't do any HD video work, so wouldn't know how or with what software to use. Quick google search shows up several benchmarks out there if thats what you want. Unfortunately benchmarks don't really tell me REAL WORLD usability, only how certain things perform. My "review", tho I am NOT a professional reviewer, just an end user is based on that kind of usage.

There will be plenty of canned benchmarks available very soon, I'm sure here and everywhere. People are looking to "bash" or "praise" Win 7. From being an early adopter of Win 7 and beta tester of it from way back in the early states, you'll find the OS performs NEARLY identical to Vista with the exception of front end user experience which is significantly more optimized. According to those same canned benchmarks, about 10% faster.

Do those benchmarks translate into real world? Sometimes, sometimes not. How efficient and speedy do 3 VM's switch between each other and the host OS? How well does it handle high memory usage with those 3 vm's with a full load of regular user apps running? Say Outlook, Excel, Word, Pidgin, a few browser windows open and maybe my debugger window open looking at some developer's mistakes? Will it crash? How much disk thrashing occurs? How much lag. All those things are important to me. During the work day, that is about what my system is used for. My time = money. I'm on a small team that supports over 6,000 servers and those VM's are my life.

I'm not a gamer. I can't tell you how well this card is going to work on the very latest high end game. Hell, I still play Battlefield 2 and you do NOT want to compete against me at Spider Solitaire.

I will tell you real world usage. As a 65+wpm touch typist, this keyboard sucks. Keys are way too flat for a good feel. You really wouldn't want to type 10 pages of text and be comfortable doing it. Screen is nice, but res is still WAY too high for my aging eyes. LOL.

The machine is "huge". It's not something you are going to want to carry around with you all the time.

It's quieter than my X205-sli3, it's WAY faster and so far, a bit more stable. With all my apps listed above running, my processor utilization (for all "8" processors that show up 4 core, 4 HT), I average about 65-70 during the workday. It's more efficient of a machine for my use than the X205 Core2Duo machine. More accomplished in less time. I suspect I'll be upgrading to the full 8gb ram sooner than I would like, especially if I attempt to run yet another VM machine concurrently which I probably WILL end up doing.

So, like I said, you want generic benchmarks or a review from a gamer's perspective, I can't help you there.

[Squall_Rinoa89]

You should be able to turn off the beep in sound and also in the bios. Reason it beeps even muted is it uses the bios speaker for the beeps. My X305 used to do that till i worked around it. Im a little heartbroken thou that they took away the full size keyboard and slimed it down for the X505.

The new style of laptops seem to have to be finger print magnets. I HATE IT. But i guess its for looks. It used to drive me nuts, i gave up trying to keep the war to keep fingerprints off the case and other parts of it. All in all thou this machine looks very promising. Might have to upgrade...

This post has been edited by Squall_Rinoa89: 28 October 2009 - 02:32 PM

[Compusmurf]

Sorry folks, been away.

To answer the several questions:

Fan. When I was gaming in SLI on my x205, the fans ran full speed. Both CPU and GPU fans and they were very audible and out the LEFT side of the laptop.

Running high end games or things like boinc (seti at home in GPU, etc) pounding away, the fans come on but it blows out the BACK and quieter. I don't really notice them, but they do blow some warm air out there.

VM. I prefer and use VMware Workstation over Microsoft's solution. More updates, more bug fixes, more OS compatibility. These chips do have hardware virtualization support so you shouldn't have any issues running the MS version. Granted, VMWare Wkstn isn't free, but sometimes you DO get what you pay for.

SSD is fast, and, well, of course, quiet. No issues. Manage your memory well tho. installing lots of apps will eat your drive space quickly. All mine go on the Seagate 500Gb 7200rpm drive instead. BTW, those drives do work with this machine. No annoying 5 second click-pause like with the previous machine.

Keyboard still sucks. Sorry, no getting around that. LOL I touchtype on my dinovo BT keyboard so no issues for me.

Memory upgrade. Yes, I looked into it. Right now it has DDR3 SODIMMS in the following config. 1x4GB, 1x2GB. to go from 6 to 8, you pull the 2GB and install a 2nd 4GB. UM, a 4GB module will set you back easily $350USD. I can wait.......

The wireless part to answer that question. No, it works fine, speed and range wise just like MOST other Wifi cards, however, I have a dualband router that can do N on the "A" 5Ghz channel which is "empty" in my neighborhood. Everyone and their pet has 2.4Ghz wireless deviced and BT and everything else. I was just hoping to use the high freq side of my router so I don't have to fight for "space" with my neighbors and other wireless devices. After watching the dB of the signal, I'm going to say it's slightly weaker than the previous Intel ABG class card that I had before.

I was able to turn off the "beep" sound in the bios as stated.

I've noticed a few nagging issues. The audio driver for the Conexant Pebble HD audio, kinda sucks and drops in some games. Not sure if it's the card or the driver. I'm highly suspecting the driver because when I uninstalled the driver and used MS's driver I didn't have those issues, but you loose some of the enhanced audio features that way.

It's STILL a fingerprint magnet. No changes there. Plexus plastic cleaner and a microfiber cloth keeps it to a minimum.

The camera driver still doesn't install and work. Again, that may be MY fault for wiping and starting over. Oh well, I prefer my setup and won't ever use the camera anyway

Would I buy it again knowing what I know? Heck yes. VERY fast and very nice machine. If I could have self configured it, I'd have chosen the 8GB ram and dumped the way too tiny SSD and went with dual 500Gb drives.

This post has been edited by Compusmurf: 22 November 2009 - 11:23 AM

[ianholt60]

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