{"id":142,"date":"2009-12-27T10:59:12","date_gmt":"2009-12-26T21:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chillingsilence.wordpress.com\/?p=142"},"modified":"2009-12-27T10:59:12","modified_gmt":"2009-12-26T21:59:12","slug":"my-thoughts-on-the-toshiba-nb200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/my-thoughts-on-the-toshiba-nb200\/","title":{"rendered":"My thoughts on the Toshiba NB200"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"8781ca4f97038dd0d58a1ad8af045721\" data-index=\"3\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-6411751809866006\";\r\n\/* BlogHorizontalSlim *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"6442664612\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 468;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 60;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>As the need arose for me to replace my previous work laptop, I was very keen to go to the opposite end of the scale. From a 17&#8243; semi-powerhouse laptop to a smaller 10&#8243; Netbook.<br \/>\nIt was a mission to carry it around everywhere, battery life sucked, and it was just not functional for anything but sitting on a desk.<br \/>\nSo I wanted something portable, to take with me on-site as I visit client sites for VoIP \/ IT support etc. I wanted something with good battery life (3-4 hours would be good I thought, which is over double what my previous was good for), I wanted it to be lightweight, semi-durable as I chuck it in my bag with other computer gear like routers and cables, and I didn&#8217;t want to have to sit around waiting for an OS like when installing on the EeePC 900 Flash Drive. A decent GPU would be nice, like an ION-based system, so I could do 1080p movies in my spare time, but that&#8217;s a lower-priority. 2GB RAM is a must, if it&#8217;s going to run Win7.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I would have liked an ARM machine running Linux, just for the geek factor, but couldn&#8217;t find anything, so I was pretty much stuck with an Atom CPU, 1.6Ghz. They&#8217;re not bad CPU&#8217;s, we use the dual-core ones in the PBX systems we build at work. Not uber-powerful single-core, but still powerful enough for browsing, word processing, IM&#8217;ing and ssh&#8217;ing into systems.<\/p>\n<p>It came down to a 10&#8243; Asus EeePC, the Acer Aspire One, or the Toshiba NB200.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d had a good run with my EeePC&#8217;s (700 &amp; 900-series w\/Celerons), but they felt a little &#8220;flimsy&#8221;, like the plastic was cheap &amp; thin. I know I&#8217;m nitpicking here but the fact they didn&#8217;t even remove the modem socket left me with the feeling that it was rushed out the factory door without enough time put into foresight of the product. The under-clocked CPU bugged me, even though after a while there were utilities you could use to fix that.<\/p>\n<p>The Acer Aspire One running Android would have been a cool novelty, I liked that idea, but to be honest I simply didn&#8217;t have enough of a chance to look into it because the retailer was out of stock. In fact PBTech recently had a boxing day sale, $399 for the Aspire One.<\/p>\n<p>This left me looking at the NB200. Now don&#8217;t get me wrong I didn&#8217;t simply pick it because I didn&#8217;t like the other two, but for a few other reasons:<br \/>\nThe &#8220;finish&#8221; on the laptop feels nice, I dunno how to describe how it feels different from the others but it does and it&#8217;s comfortable to use.<br \/>\nThe battery life (6-Cell battery) is rated at 9 hours. On the WiFi I get around 7-8 hours quite easily, and it&#8217;s marvelous! Not having to plug it in constantly is so, so nice!! Not to mention that replacement batteries are readily available and cost only around $70-90 from PBTech, so when I&#8217;ve abused the heck outta this one, I&#8217;ll have another one ready to go.<br \/>\nNow this is a small bonus, but the placement of the USB ports is good, they&#8217;re well spaced apart so some of the slightly larger thumbdrives don&#8217;t collide.<br \/>\nThe HDD utility is also cool (Though the popup gets annoying as hell), having it park the HDD head when it detects vibration or movement. I dunno how well it works, but it sounds like a good feature, especially on a Netbook which you&#8217;re likely to have on-the-go!<br \/>\nThe battery also sticks out a little at the back, which I&#8217;ve decided is actually a benefit. It&#8217;s nice to hold on to while carrying it, and it also prevents it from falling back on your lap while you wriggle about getting comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>Annoyances:<br \/>\nI read a review on it prior to buying it, which did a crappy as job of identifying pro&#8217;s and cons. It said that the &#8220;WiFi On&#8221; LED down the front was a bad thing and a major annoyance, and the Toshiba logo on the back was a bad thing. Not really.. Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve found annoying, or less-than-good with it.<br \/>\nWin7 Starter, I got rid of it immediately. Didn&#8217;t even waste my time with booting it more than once, though I did boot it just to see what A\/V (Nortons) was installed. It&#8217;s running Win7 Enterprise for now.<br \/>\nThe Touchpad, I found myself tapping with my palms when I didn&#8217;t want, I never had that issue with my EeePC&#8217;s, though maybe that&#8217;s because this one is much larger (Which is cool), but anyway I installed the Alps touchpad driver and set it to disable when I plug in a USB mouse. I&#8217;ve got a Logitech which is awesome, cheap, and I can leave the receiver in at all times.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s no &#8220;sleeve&#8221; or anything that comes with it instead of a bag, like the EeePC had. Not a biggy, but I must admit to being disappointed.<br \/>\nThe back of the screen holds fingerprints incredibly well, better than it should, and it&#8217;s always looking grubby which is unfortunate.<br \/>\nI replaced the 1GB RAM stick with a 2GB one. I guess because it&#8217;s Win7 Starter it doesn&#8217;t need more than 1GB, but I&#8217;m being picky here.<br \/>\nThe mono speaker is poorly placed underneath and is terribly quiet. I have headphones though and won&#8217;t use it as a &#8220;jukebox&#8221; without other speakers, so it&#8217;s a moot point. It&#8217;s not a media-box at all though, don&#8217;t even bother trying to crowd around mates to watch a video clip without external speakers or headphones.<br \/>\nThe ~ button is also right next to the left-alt which is a PITA. I go to Alt + Tab and find myself writing &#8220;~     &#8221; \ud83d\ude41<br \/>\nI&#8217;m having a tough time with the Fn buttons on my reinstalled Win7. Cant get them working which is a pain.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t installed Linux on it, but I will be, and I&#8217;ll update this when I do.<\/p>\n<p>Overall there are some minor annoyances, but I&#8217;d still rate it around 8.5\/10. I&#8217;m very happy with it, and the minor annoyances are pretty easily remedied.<br \/>\nIf you have one, or any other Netbook, I&#8217;m keen to know your thoughts on yours \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Chill.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE &#8212; 27 \/ 01 \/ 2010:<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that it runs Linux Mint 8 perfectly fine. Also, it does 720p h.264 videos just fine too, though if you&#8217;re running anything else there&#8217;s a good chance it&#8217;ll start to drop frames.<\/p>\n<p>Battery life still continues to impress me \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the need arose for me to replace my previous work laptop, I was very keen to go to the opposite end of the scale. From a 17&#8243; semi-powerhouse laptop to a smaller 10&#8243; Netbook. It was a mission to carry it around everywhere, battery life sucked, and it was just not functional for anything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[8,14,19,21,24,54,92,96,101,107,108,118,120,124,125,179,196],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-product-reviews","tag-6-cell","tag-android","tag-arm","tag-atom","tag-battery-life","tag-eeepc","tag-intel","tag-ion","tag-laptop","tag-logitech","tag-m305","tag-nb200","tag-netbook","tag-notebook","tag-nvidia","tag-toshiba","tag-windows-7"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWi3e-2i","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.c2s.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}