[cantcstr8]

You know, sometimes it takes seeing the other side of the the world to appreciate how good you have in it your own backyard.

My sister's husband just bought a Toshiba Satellite notebook computer (against my advice) because there are lots more programs for the PC. Of course he could not tell me justy exactly how many word processors he needs to run but anyway......

The machine is one of those new Media Center PCs. It has a 15.4" widescreen, 60 GB harddrive. DVD-RW drive and a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4.

The machine is HUGE, I mean HUGE, no I mean HUGE. Logically it would roughly compete with the 15" Powerbook but size wise it is more like the 17" but over twice as thick. It is a mix of dark blue, silver and black

There are 6 different stickers (versus1 on my ibook that tells you how to eject the CD).The default screen is this enormous Toshiba Logo in pink, orange and grey. UGLY!

It does have two very good features. It comes with a 5400 RPM drive and the screen quality is outstanding. It's even brighter than my studio display.

So setting it up took about 30 minutes. When we registered it it insisted on using the modem even though we had a cable modem connection.

So after that was the download of 15 urgent patches( reboot three times in that). Then came the barrage of annoying messages; You have not configured your antivirus, sign up for .NET, You have unused icons on the desktop, your battery is low (after just under an hour), welcome to Earthlink.......

Anyway after getting through that barrage and connecting the AC adapter tighter this time we the set up the media center.This consists of two external boxes (the tuner module and the infrared module) which each had thier own USB plug and the tuner had a seperate power brick.

So we got those configured and then configured the remote control (?) and then downloaded the program guide. That went fairly smoothly although it took awhile.

So actually using it..... It's fast running UT2003 it beats the pants off my G4 when you have all the goodies turned on. Using the Media Center, the picture is very grainy and there are abrupt changes in brightness. Also after watching it for about 10 minutes the screen saver kicked on (you'd think the software would be smart enough to disable that).

The fan has been on almost the whole time and got quite loud when playing unreal.

Meanwhile getting the Wireless to work with the DLINK base station took the better part of 45 minutes because of a hidden space in the name.....

By the way everybody slams Appleworks because it's not office. Well it beats the heck out of Micrsoft Works.

So lastly we installed Office 2003 which has somehow killed all the media center apps...

Meanwhile my Ibook just hums along.

[castle3]

yes, thats right.

[anaphora68]

Toshiba makes one of the worst laptops out there, right up there with Compaq. The intel processors are pretty fast, but the hardware software integration between the OS and the computer is just awful.

Things just (for the most part) work on a mac. And I don't get the more software argument, macs run all the same stuff people use primarily on thier PC.

[dracoleb]

That comparison of Appleworks to Microsoft Works (won't even begin with what is wrong with that name) is much more valid than the comparisons to Office, which is a fine program, though is costs quite a bit. It just makes logical sense (though not always true) that the program that you have to shell out bucks for is going to be better than one they just give you with the computer.