Toshiba Qosmio G10-100

Although it stretches the definition of "laptop" to the limits of credulity -- this thing is BIG -- in terms of features and performance you're not going to be disappointed.

The first thing that strikes you about this laptop will be the screen -- a massive 17" widescreen (16:10) monster (about the size of an A3 sheet of paper) with fantastic brightness and clarity; the native WXGA resolution (1440 x 900) is enough that ...
...and works perfectly for entertainment purposes. Toshiba's "LCD Overdrive" technology means that even playing fast paced games produces no visible "smearing" that can plague lesser LCD screens.

In the raw power stakes the 1.7GHz P4-M may not be the fastest in terms of clock speed, but the 2MB L2 cache and pipelining optimisations mean that in most cases it performs extremely well without a hint of sluggishness; CPU ... more

Although it stretches the definition of "laptop" to the limits of credulity -- this thing is BIG -- in terms of features and performance you're not going to be disappointed.

The first thing that strikes you about this laptop will be the screen -- a massive 17" widescreen (16:10) monster (about the size of an A3 sheet of paper) with fantastic brightness and clarity; the native WXGA resolution (1440 x 900) is enough that you can fit plenty on the screen for serious work, and works perfectly for entertainment purposes. Toshiba's "LCD Overdrive" technology means that even playing fast paced games produces no visible "smearing" that can plague lesser LCD screens.

In the raw power stakes the 1.7GHz P4-M may not be the fastest in terms of clock speed, but the 2MB L2 cache and pipelining optimisations mean that in most cases it performs extremely well without a hint of sluggishness; CPU intensive tasks (for example, encoding video) suffer slightly, but are still quick enough. The 512Mb of RAM is enough to easily run several applications at once, and as it's supplied as a single 512Mb module there's a spare slot should you want to upgrade. In short, as a "regular" laptop it's more than man enough for the job.

The icing on the cake, though, has to be the various media features included. It comes supplied with XP Media Center Edition and can act as a TV, DVD player, video recorder, and hi-fi. Simply plug in an aerial, satellite system or other set-top box, answer a few simple questions, and it's ready to go. You can pause and rewind live TV, schedule recordings from the on-screen TV guide (it'll even record all episodes of a series automatically), and even burn recorded TV onto a DVD that will work in almost any regular DVD player.

The on-board Harmon-Kardon speakers produce a surprisingly rich sound, and the bundled SRS "virtual surround" system does a good job with DVDs; unfortunately no true 5.1 outputs are provided, although that probably wouldn't be a particularly useful feature on a laptop!

Media Center is also handy for digital camera users -- a few simple image editing tools (red-eye removal, cropping, colour balance, etc.) are available, and slideshows can be recorded on to DVD to send to granny to watch on TV, and the Qosmio's built-in multi-format card reader makes short work of transferring pictures from your camera.

Users with digital video cameras will also not be disappointed. Two FireWire (iLink) ports allow easy connection of most digital camcorders, and the bundled Movie Maker while not quite up to professional standards, is more than adequate for editing your footage. (The Media Center version of Movie Maker will, unlike the normal version, produce DVD-compatible output, removing the need to buy expensive third-party software to record your epics for posterity.)

Other features of note are the SCART output, built in WiFi 802.11g wireless networking, and the impressive nVidia GeForce FX5700Go graphics chipset which can cope with even the most demanding of modern games -- even DOOM3 and Half-Life 2 don't present a problem.

The only real fault I can find is that battery life can be a bit disappointing; with everything turned on you can expect around an hour from a full charge, although reducing the screen brightness and turning down the CPU speed (easily accomplished with the power management software) can drag that out to two or three hours at a stretch. It's also a big and heavy machine and gets quite warm, so it's unlikely you'll ever want to use it on your lap for any length of time. (It's also not cheap, but you certainly get your money's worth!)

Since getting one of these my uber-powerful desktop machine has hardly got a look-in, and if you've got the money to spare I can't recommend this laptop highly enough. 

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