Toshiba Equium M70-337

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The toshiba software bundled with it is also satisfactory, a particular delight is the wireless hotspot finder which looks like a radar screen and scans for any other wireless devices within range and then shows their proximity, just like a ships radar!

Im not sure where mine was purchased from although I think it was PC World, and they assured my sister that it came with Office when it only came with Works so ...
...a model problem.

All in all a great model that I am very happy with, my sister chose well and it has served me well it is always fast and responsive (sounds like a car review), the CD/DVD writer drive works very well with the packaged software (although I must confess I havent created any DVDs yet). The 60gb (although the spec page says 40) is more than sufficient for a few songs, pictures and word documents and with ample battery ... more

So I got given this laptop for my 21st birthday earlier this year and I was overjoyed with the present. It has everything you could ask for in a laptop, bar a couple of exceptions which I only point out as I am very awkward and never pleased!

It is a very aesthetically pleasing model, performs satisfactorily for what I use it for, but then, my demands on a laptop are very limited as I only really browse the web, listen and download music, play DVDs and do my Open University coursework.

It has excellent connectivity with its 3 USB slots (two rear one on left hand side), one PCMCIA slot (probably due to fewer of these devices being purchased, or to aid the slimline design of the unit), integrated wireless networking, S-Video out, VGA out, UFIR, integrated modem and wired ethernet conenction, and SD/XD/MMC Card reader towards the front.

The toshiba software bundled with it is also satisfactory, a particular delight is the wireless hotspot finder which looks like a radar screen and scans for any other wireless devices within range and then shows their proximity, just like a ships radar!

Im not sure where mine was purchased from although I think it was PC World, and they assured my sister that it came with Office when it only came with Works so that wasnt great, although, thats a vendor problem and not a model problem.

All in all a great model that I am very happy with, my sister chose well and it has served me well it is always fast and responsive (sounds like a car review), the CD/DVD writer drive works very well with the packaged software (although I must confess I havent created any DVDs yet). The 60gb (although the spec page says 40) is more than sufficient for a few songs, pictures and word documents and with ample battery life, unless you're like me with a bluetooth dongle, and 3G datacard plugged in, listening to music. It has a bright well specced screen with no dead pixels on it.

There are only a couple of minor niggles to be aware of with the item.

Firstly, the touchpad can be very temperamental, especially when browing the web. Certain areas of the touchpad seem to provoke strange responses (like pressing the top of the pad sometimes compels your browser to go back a page) although this can be stemmed somewhat by toshibas touchpad customisation tools.

Secondly, the media controls on the right hand side will sometimes not work when the laptop has a few processes going on. Which is usually exactly the time you want to use them!

Thirdly, (I said I was being picky earlier) there is no integral bluetooth connection, which would have been the icing on the connectivity cake in this well specced model and also a simcard slot for 3G/GPRS access would have been welcomed and prevented the addition of the vodafone GPRS/3G datacard (damn you, vodafone data card you fickle beast).

Fourthly, the side USB port is awkwardly positioned under the PCMCIA slot and fat dongles (and i have a fat dongle) can sometimes foul on any PCMCIA cards you may have.

Fifthly, if you select shutdown from the start menu and then close the laptop (as you would when shutting down) the laptop will hibernate and not shut down. This means you have to wait for the laptop to turn off before closing the lid which can be awkward.

Sixthly and finally in this very picky list of bad points is the location of the "windows key". This is the key usually in the bottom right of the keyboard which pops up the start menu, I say usually, because on the Equium its in the top right! This causes a lot of confusion as it's not where you're used to it being, having said this, the rest of the keyboard is very well laid out and not too cramped and the keys have an excellent feel to them. 

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