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Well it I broke down and bought a T7200 Core 2 Duo processor to put it in my M400. The install went smoothly, almost too smooth...;-) Everything is installed but it seems that the 1.8W bios no longer keeps the fan noise down :-(. Unfortunately I got too confident that the bios thing would continue to work that I uninstalled my fan hack. Now the noise is worse than before.... It is getting late here so I will not get into too many details. I did snap a few pictures that I will post later. To be continued....
A very nice article on the Toshiba M400 and Windows Vista June CTP here .
As you probably have figured out I have recently purchased a Toshiba M400. I also went out and purchased a few accessories, slice battery, hard drive media adapter. One thing about this experience is that unless you really want to throw away money, don't bother with the accessories. First of all the slice battery is $199 for an extra two hours of life (It is rated only at 4000mah vs. the 6700mah of the standard battery), the size of the battery made it almost impossible to use. I think I am going to just get an extra main battery and just swap the batteries in the evening for charging. (BTW, charging on the Toshiba M400 takes a really long time, 2-3 hours for a full charge, this is probably due to the underpowered adapter) So it seems that the FAN issue is not going to go away anytime soon. It seems that if the temp of the notebook reaches 40C it will start running the fan really hard. This is without a doubt sucking some of my battery life. From what I understand is that the CPU can go...
I have finally got Vista Beta 2 running on my M400. It seems really stable. I do miss the weather gadget that was present in previous builds. All of the hardware buttons do not work out of the box. However you can use the Intel driver to rotate the screen. Alas, no Aero glass. It seems that Intel has really messed this one up. (I am kinda wishing that Toshiba continued with the Nvidia) On the Intel site they say that they are Vista ready and there are a number of people who seem to have gotten glass to work. But unfortunately I am not one of them. If someone cares to give me some tips I would appreciate it. Well lets see, I have a whole lot of beta stuff going on here. Vista Beta, Office Beta, Virtual Server R2 SP1 beta, Office SharePoint Beta... For the most part Vista is very nice. Compatibility seems good except for all those system utilities, and driver support is just not there yet. Office 2007 is amazing. The beta is significantly more stable and much more polished. I do have an issue...
It has been over a week with my M400. So far so good, with a few exception. If you are like me, I prefer negative comments vs. positive ones. There are many devices out there that can fit some needs but not others. For example, my primary use for this tablet is a replacement for my primary notebook that I carry around with me everywhere, I need to run Virtual Machines, do some development in visual Studio, and do some Photo retouching work. (btw, I used to carry around the 700m 1.8Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 100 GB). Although it is about 1/2 pound heavier and a bit on the chunky side as compared to the 700m, this notebook has so far delivered on my primary needs. The latest build on Windows Vista works really well. It now has the drivers for the integrated video card (Although you have to get them by running an update on the device). I haven't gotten Aero Glass working but that is my next task. The new side bar is really nice. For those interested in a screen protector, I purchased a screen protector...
It has been about four days, two rebuilds, using my M400 . At first I thought I would take a ride on the wild side with Windows Vista 5308. Many of the Toshiba features didn't work properly, Bluetooth, fingerprint logon, Hard drive accelerometer to name a few. The most annoying of the bunch was the inability to be able to use DUN with my Windows Mobile 5 EDVO phone. Bluetooth wouldn't work and the USB DUN required a reboot every time I disconnected the phone. Lucky for me I had made the recovery DVDs before I actually took the walk =). Occasionally after an install, the Tablet hardware buttons didn't work. I don't know what the cause was but all I had to do was reinstall the driver. One other thing, if you office uses Citrix, don't install the password manager. It replaces the windows logon GINA and your fingerprint logon will no longer work. A quick uninstall of this remedied the problem. Anyway everything is back to defaults, Windows XP and all the Toshiba drivers. For the most part I...
It looks to me that Intel may have enabled their Virtualization technology in their Core Duo chips. But alas it seems that it is only working on the Apple/Intel machines. What does this mean… Are PC users now second class citizens, next to Apple? Or are PC manufactures behind on implementing the new features in their BIOS? Anyway this is good news since VT allows the second virtual machine to run almost as fast as booting it natively. Very cool.
Tablet Kiosk pic0 Tablet Kiosk pic1 Tablet Kiosk pic2 ASUS UMPC pic0 ASUS UMPC pic1 Not a UMPC but really cool: Motion Computing LS800 pic0 It is about the same thickness but a bit wider, since it is 800x600 vs. 800x400
There were a number of UMPCs and Tablets here at the conference. Tablet Kiosk and ASUS . They also had the Fujitsu 1510D and the Motion Computing LS800 . I won't go into the details, you can get them from the links above. These devices are a nice size, little on the heavy side though. They run pretty hot, which doesn't lend its self to good battery life. Unfortunately they were only showing off the tablet pc user interface, there were no videos or applications to really get a feel for the power of the VIA processor. With the various units side by side, I am really having a hard time understanding why I would buy a UMPC. I still like the portability aspect, but I need a bit more computing power if I am going to carry a UMPC as my primary device. If I need some basic note entry, I still have my WM5 phone. But the Motion Computing LS800 and the Fujitsu 1510D are what I think I would look to for a ultra-mobile tablet, if they could add a touch screen in addition. The IBM ThinkPad x41 and the...
I can't believe that the UMPCs will cost more than some laptops!!! I don't know if I would buy one now especially since there is not Core Duo in the device... http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/31/samsung-q1-umpc-available-for-pre-order-for-1-400/ If the price doesn't com down I am going to forget about it...
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