Toshiba Satellite P100-ST9742
Friday, February 16, 2007
At this time of year most folks looking for a new laptop are probably going to sit tight until the new year. That's when some retailers, their minds perhaps clouded by sherry and bellies bloated with turkey, slash prices and bargains abound. But for those eager for a notebook to play games on during the holiday season, the New Toshiba Satellite P100-ST9742 should appease all but the most hardened of gamers.Sporting an attractive golden lid which Toshiba describes as "Sunlight Copper", this Toshiba Satelite notebook boasts an Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics processing unit. However though cutting edge. this isn't Nvidia's best GPU on the market. The latest GeForce Go 7950 GTX takes that accolade, offering a memory bandwidth of 44.9 GB per second as opposed to the 7900 which only offers 38.4. You can find the 7950 in the latest, more expensive XPS M1710 laptop from Dell.
Moving swiftly on, the solid but slimline 7.1 pound chassis of the Toshiba P100 is packed with a 2 GHz core 2 duo processor (T7200), 100GB SATA hard drive, 2GB of RAM and 512MB GDDR3 of dedicated graphics memory. The display is a nice size for gaming, a 17-inch TFT wide-screen offering a 1680x1050 resolution. The screens on these Toshiba Satellite notebooks are often praised because of the TRUBRITE tech which seems to make images more precise. If you want to head over to a coffee shop and email between gaming and sipping expressos, wireless connectivity is included in the form of an Intel PRO/Wireless (802.11a/b/g) connection.
This Toshiba Satellite is also bundled with Harman Kardon stereo speakers, extra laptop security in the form of a fingerprint reader, and Bluetooth tech allows you to connect wirelessly with gaming controls. Ports and slots include a 5-in-1 Bridge Media Adapter, 4 USB ports, Memory Stick slot and a PCMCIA-Type II slot.
My opinion? This isn't the most expensive gaming laptop on the market, nor is it a gold medal winner tech wise. But it does offer silver medal specs, stylish design, a competitive price, and if you're ecologically minded, the Satellite P100-ST9742 is RoHS compliant, meaning it has less nasties inside like lead, cadmium and mercury. Time will tell if this model will prove as popular as Toshiba's best selling budget sibling, the Satellite A105. This notebook is available at Toshibadirect.com.
posted by Abu Yusuff @ 7:05 PM,
