My Toshiba T135D Came in the Mail Today

Written 2010-01-20

Tags:Intel GMA Intel Atom Hewlett-Packard 

After rethinking the requirements of a laptop. I've come up with the following:
  • Real video card (shared memory is fine, just no Intel GMA )
  • CPU Power equivalent to Atom 330 (Dual Core 1.6 Ghz Included )
  • CPU Virtualization Support (Turion Neo has it, Atom 330 doesn't)
  • CPU 64 bit processing (Turion Neo has it, Atom N280 doesn't)
  • Built In SD Slot or SSD Drive ( SD Slot)
  • Hardline Gigabit-Ethernet or N Wifi ( Both )

First impressions:
  • Large deadzone between left and right click. The mouse is a single bar, like a see-saw, with microswitches on each side.
  • Solitaire is far cooler than Windows XP and previous editions.
  • Internet Explorer comes only with Google Toolbar, which is far better than HP's version.
  • The screen is bright, better resolution than my old 13.3 inch Macbook.
  • Smaller and lighter than the Mcbook, but bigger than the HP 311.
  • The 'Toshiba HDD Protection' system often pops up while the machine is sitting still informing me that a vibration was detected and that the hard drive head was parked to protect it.
  • Windows UAC is pretty annoying.
  • There's a PrintScreen key!
  • Paint has been reworked.
  • No weird USB Whitelist junk like HP uses either.
  • There's a built-in watt meter application. This should just be a simple power controller query, but when combined with a graph, it is pretty neat. The machine idles around 3-4 watts.
Toshiba Power Meter

Power Meter.png
  • I never thought I would buy a new AMD Processor, ever since Intel's Core 2 Duo stompfest, but on this small market, low speed high capability CPUs, AMD really has something. Combined with the fact that Intel has attached a chipset directly to the CPU on their newer units, I just can't see usable 3D graphics with the new Intel Atoms. The whole thing's pretty slick.

On a side note, I managed to never use Windows Vista, except for one time I used it to launch Firefox.