PureBasic Forums - English

I am looking to buy a Notebook computer soon. I used to use Compaq, but I am not necessarily happy with their quality after the HP/Compaq merger.

I am not overly fond of Dell or Gateway due to past experience.

I have been looking at Toshiba. Does anybody have any experience good or bad with Toshibas?

I could care less about 3D gaming, but would like to be able to play 2D games that use Direct Draw or OpenGL in Windowed mode or fullscreen. I want to buy something nice that will hold up and last me for a few years (3-5), as I do not have a lot of money. This would be a kind of one time thing as I will be getting some unexpected money soon.

How are the screens on Toshibas, do they hold up, no pixel problems. How about hard drive reliability?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I have a Toshiba 2520 CDS satellite notebook which I bought late in 1998 & still use on a daily basis with my work.
I run a few old dos based programs with my work which manufacturers will not be updating so in a big way I am stuck with good old W98 & it's command.com dos
It has been a real workhorse for me & exceptionally reliable.

The biggest fault I have had with it is with a monitor component which has failed on me twice in all these years of service. ( The last time it happened around 18 months ago, I sent it to the Aus Toshiba dealers in Sydney, who then quoted me $1000.00Au to repair it, I said no just send it back & I will make a desktop out of it. but they then wanted $113.00 for the quote or they would not send it back. So I payed up & asked that they supply me with a new converter pcb which I knew was $35.00. They then offered to put it in for me which I accepted. So, the computer gets back to me & hasn't missed a beat since & ended up costing me a total of $134.00 for repair instead of the $1000.00 I was quoted. - yes the numbers dont add up, but that was what they charged me!)

Anyway, if the latest Toshiba's are anywhere near as reliable as my old beast, I would say go for it for sure.

I'm tapping away right now on a Toshiba Satellite Pro - I'd highly recommend them. The only thing I'd mention is that (at least the one I got) didn't have enough RAM, but I installed another 256 MB to make a nice, fat 512 and everything is fantastic.

This is the exact model I am considering.

Thoughts on this model?

I'm using a Satellite P20 (P4 3GHz), and generally it's been fine. I agree about extra RAM - I'm running 512Mb and sometimes wish I had 1Gb. It runs quite hot on the base, which is not unusual for many notebooks, so I run it full-time with an aluminium cooler base.