[macwalk]

Anyone have any real details as to how these to stack up to one another.

Feature wise that is

[MrK]

The Toshiba has a desktop chip and poor battery life. Performance is a wash, with the Toshiba a little faster in some areas, the PB faster in others. They use the same screen from the same manufacturer.

Oh. The Toshiba is $1k less. So if money is an issue...

[geekwagon]

Originally posted by macwalk:
Anyone have any real details as to how these to stack up to one another.

Feature wise that is

The Toshiba is much bigger and heavier than the 17" PB, it is made out of plastic and has these extraneous lights all over it (I hate that..)

The Powerbook has a much better GPU with 2x as much VRAM. The Toshiba has 10/100 instead of 10/100/1000 ethernet, VGA out instead of DVI. No internal bluetooth that I can see listed..

The Powerbook comes with a better software bundle. The Toshiba runs XP Home (most people are going to want/need XP Pro)

I'm also wondering if that laptop has been EOL'ed. I can't find any reference to it on Toshiba's Portables site, CompUSA is out of stock, etc.

[juanpacolopez]

Originally posted by MrK:
The Toshiba has a desktop chip and poor battery life. Performance is a wash, with the Toshiba a little faster in some areas, the PB faster in others. They use the same screen from the same manufacturer.

Oh. The Toshiba is $1k less. So if money is an issue...

Let's not forget weight...

Doesn't the Toshiba weigh like 9lbs?

[cszar2001]

Check out Steves Keynote adress from Paris-it`s on the Apple website.
They put the Toshiba and the PB 17 side by side: the Toshiba is thicker then the PB even when it`s opened!!!

They should call it "I wanted to be a laptop-but my designer didn`t get it".

[nagromme]

Look at all the ports and details of any PowerBook, and the supposedly-cheaper Wintel alternatives don't often stack up.

The lighted keyboard, FW800, slot-load drive, built-in TV-out and Bluetooth come to mind. Apple's weight and thinness can't be beat without giving up some basics like an optical drive. And remember that the 17" graphics board is very high-end. Good for games AND for the UI.

Plus of course the 17" comes with some frills standard that cost extra on lower PBs: big 80 GB HD, SuperDrive, and THREE kinds of wireless: Bluetooth, 802.11b, 802.11g (the 17" has the AirPort Extreme card pre-installed).

And although the Pentium-M is supposed to be a decent performer, the models I've looked at always have poor battery life.

The Toshiba of course, is also hideous to behold and I doubt it has Apple durability.

But MOST IMPORTANTLY, the Toshiba won't run Panther. If features are what you want, giving up Panther (or even Jaguar) is a HUGE sacrifice.

The Toshiba has a wide and varied selection of viruses, however, and games will come out 1 to 6 months sooner for it.

[Link]

Actually the Toshiba P20 (I believe it was), and also dubbed the aircraft carrier of laptops.. did NOT have a pentium m but a full blown desktop pentium 4.

I bet the second you unplug that thing it scales down to ~1ghz if you want ANY battery life and you can't set it on your lap due to all the fans on the bottom.

It don't look like a laptop... more like a briefcase.