It’s always nice to get in a jolly positive review from a blog we’re big fans of, and so this glowing take on the Toshiba Satellite A300D has seen smiles all round the talkToshiba office today.  

And it’s the gaj-it.com blog today who provided the write-up, and without going into too much detail (we suggest you pop over and read here), just take a look at the overall verdict.

Design 9/10
Usability: 8/10
Features: 9/10
Value: 8/10
 

Particularly impressed with the sound which was “clear and crisp, even at a high level” which meant that the reviewer’s “girlfriend’s Trance music collection could be heard for the neighbours to get annoyed at”. Coupled with that, Arutha added “this laptop makes worrying about hard disc space non existent”, whilst suggesting “the screen is a rather nice affair, with it being not too small or not too large”.

Of course, it can’t all be to one’s taste – “The mouse pad is a different story, which I didn’t like at all”, but overall – a very positive review indeed! Read it all here.

A new review of the Toshiba Portege M700 has popped up on Computer and Laptop’s Weblog in which the author concentrates on the essentials such as battery life, speakers, wireless connectivity and the operating system and finds it to be a generally positive experience.

He states that the overall battery life is “good”, but “I wouldn’t brag about it, unless I had the optional slice battery to go with it”. Though he got around 3 and a half hours in high performance mode, the M700 gave up to 5 hours in balanced mode which is “respectable”. He thought the speakers were not as loud as his iPod, but this is “typical for a business tablet” and the volume wheel is a “convenient feature.” As well as finding that the connectivity “worked fine”, the author had “no problems” running Microsoft Vista Business; indeed her prefers Vista on tablets “thanks to the improvements in handwriting recognition and the pen flicks.”

Concluding that the M700 is “a solid tablet”, the author thinks that although it’s not fancy, it has “all necessities” and “doesn’t lack in performance or features”. Head on over to Computer and Laptop’s Weblog for the full review.

Napoleon Creative was, in a word, “furious”. His new Sony laptop had lasted just 2 months before dying most spectacularly in a client meeting “it came up with error message “didn’t hibernate properly” or some such, and it’s now as dead as a dodo.” Luckily talkToshiba were there to lend a hand – and luckily for us, Napoleon was kind enough to scribe his experiences with the machine in this here comment box.

After sending him a Toshiba Satellite X-200 which Napoleon fully got to grips with, his primary reaction was unsurprising. “First impression is that it’s HUGE. Lovely to have that real estate on the screen, would be great for After Effects, on my 14″ Sony I sometimes struggle” and despite being violently opposed to the tortoise-shell top, found other elements of the laptop very favorable indeed.

Making particular note of the inbuilt webcam and its pleasing effects on his skin-tone “the camera on the Toshiba is much clearer and I have a much healthier glow in it”, as well as those ever-popular harmon/kardon speakers “they’re great, a much fuller sound than the sounds that float around the laptop”. There’s plenty more too, with the only problem the weight on his poor old legs. Pop over here, and check the comments section for his fullest review.

If you can’t trust Trusted Reviews, who can you trust? Ardjuna Seghers has written up a meaty 8 page review on the Toshiba Satellite A300-177 Notebook and he’s given it a tentative thumbs up. Though he’s not sure about the “striking new design”, he appreciates the user interface; especially the nowadays-rare appearance of a manual volume dial “which is a pleasure to use.”

Ardjuna bigs up the A300- 177’s specs, reporting they “don’t leave you wanting… with 2GB of RAM and a generous 200GB hard drive providing ample storage, while the T5550 Intel Core 2 Duo zips along at 1.83GHz” and also makes note of the DVD writer which can handle “most media on the market”. Most impressive to Ardjuna, however, are the speakers as he thinks the sound they produce is “stunning”, especially for their size. Though he doesn’t think the A300 is suitable for serious gamers, it turns movies and music “into an aural joy”.

Head on over to Trusted Reviews for the full picture on the A300.

‘Give a Joeb a laptop, and lo – he shalt blog’ seems to be the phrase doing the rounds at Talktoshiba.com at the moment, and it is with great pleasure and gratitude that we can inform you that he has uploaded 3 posts onto his site in the past week! 

We mentioned the first of these back on Tuesday, but since then – Joeb has posted two more fascinating posts about the Qosmio itself, the first of which deals with the technical specifications, the second deals with the bundled software that comes with said laptop.

I shan’t give away everything Joeb has to say – after all, you would be much better served to read his full unabridged text over on his blog, but it is safe to say he has picked up on my personal favourite aspect of the Qosmio – the rather incredible Harmon/Kardon speakers: “I have to say, the speakers on this laptop are BRILLIANT, not just decent for a laptop, they’re really good anyway, and I can safely say, they are the best speakers I have ever heard on a laptop, it even beats a fair few desktops on this! It’s even got a sub-woofer!” 

Admittedly – he wasn’t impressed with the fact that Norton anti-virus was pre-installed onto the laptop “I make it no secret that I dislike Norton software”, but – was otherwise “glad [to see that Toshiba] are cutting down on the amount of software preinstalled.” Enough! Go see Joeb….