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General discussion

Any personal experience with Toshiba's M35-S456?

Sep 24, 2004 11:14PM PDT

After going thru some 'exercises' to determine my most favorable options in my needs for a laptop, one of my 'best' choices comes to the Toshiba M35-S456. I've checked several of the rating sites and really found very little in the way of much 'reinforcement' to purchase this notebook.
Is it maybe a poor choice or are there not enough of them out there where people have come forth to rate this model?
I'd appreciate anyone's input about this model.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration,

Discussion is locked

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Re: Any personal experience with Toshiba's M35-S456?
Sep 25, 2004 6:56PM PDT

This is a very popular Pentium M Centrino 15.4" widescreen and it has done very well. The M35S456 was the first retail model to have the Toshiba XGA Trubrite LCD (similar to Sony Xbrite and now HP/Compaq Briteview available on custom order notebooks at hpshopping).

I nearly bought the previous Toshiba M35S320 which had a Banias Pentium M 1.5 and no Trubrite but the Compaq X1000 series I bought had a slightly better LCD and a lower price at that time. This is the same as the HPZT3000.

I have heard that this model has been so popular that Toshiba does not have the Trubrite LCD option on their custom order site at all.

You will see many discussions over the Toshiba M35S456 in the past few months on this Cnet Notebook forums so read them yourself.

The only negatives are the fact that the notebook does run a bit hot in the touchpad area and under the notebook (X1000/ZT3000 runs cooler and also has much less fan noise) and also some people don't want to pay the extra $ for a DVD burner (versus a CD-RW/DVD ROM for $200 less).

Both of these notebooks have 64mb dedicated video RAM which is decent but the Acer 2000 series and Dell 8600, etc have 128mb dedicated RAM for gamers.

The Harmon Kardon speakers are quite good for a notebook and have a bit of bass but they are better at lower volumes of course.

The Toshiba DVD burner is also multiformat which is a plus. The HP/Compaq used to be only DVD+ but now they are multiformat as well.

The M35S456 has the Dothan 1.7 735 Pentium M so you have plenty of power and 3.5-4 hours battery life with wi-fi on or longer with it off (running a widescreen DVD will be a similar timeframe to wi-fi use).

Retail price is $1999 but you can find it on sale at times for $1850 after rebates or even $1799 once at Compusa if you are patient.

THe unit has a 4200rpm hard drive which is not ideal but you can only get a 5400 rpm or higher on a custom order notebook like the HPZT3000 or Compaq X1000 online (their retail notebooks have the same issues).

See Circuit City's website for the Toshiba M35S456 -- they have many positive user comments there. The Cnet review was below the 8.1 of the X1000 and 8.0 of the ZT3000 but the review was done on an older Toshiba M35 before it got the Trubrite LCD and Dothan Pentium M with the 2mb L2 system cache (double that of earlier Banias CPU's)

Also, see notebookforums.com for toshiba postings or X1000forums.com if you want to see an alternative from HP/Compaq (and an outstanding dedicated forum).

HP/Compaq does allow you to fully customize and order less RAM (256mb) and order 512mb later on your own for less than you would pay the manufacturer for 256mb more. Also, you can get the 5400rpm hard drive (up to 50% faster seek time) and the Briteview XGA LCD or higher SXGA or UXGA resolutions. And they have a $100 custom order rebate and a 6% student APP discount that can get you between $1,000 and $1,500 after discounts --especially if you don't need the DVD burner.

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Re: Any personal experience with Toshiba's M35-S456?
Sep 25, 2004 9:06PM PDT

I want to jump in here. I just purchased this machine and I couldn't be happier with it. I'm using it for word/excel/access stuff as well as internet access. The screen is unbelievable, it is light enough to carry around comfortably, and it's fast enough for anything I throw at it. I'm not a big gamer and I understand that 128 dedicated memory is better for some of the newest games but for standard 'office' work this is one great machine! Eventually I'm going to upgrade the memory and replace the HD with a faster drive but for now this is more than enough machine for me. If you do a search on this site you will see a lot of comments on this machine. People note that the machine heats up around the touch pad - I've noticed this but it doesn't bother me; it's not too hot to touch, only warm. Here is a link to a review of the machine:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=1991

I want to use this opportunity to publically thank Ken Sanramon for the time and effort that he puts into this forum. When I bought my machine I started out knowing nothing about shared vrs dedicated video memory, M4 vrs P4 chips, Briteview screens - nothing. Sales people at BB, etc were nice but not very helpful in navigating through the wide range of laptops currently available. Without Ken's posts to this forum I would have been lost and worse, not gotten a machine that met my needs. So thanks to Ken and good luck with your decision.

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Re: Any personal experience with Toshiba's M35-S456?
Sep 26, 2004 5:51AM PDT

If you want this prebuilt M35M456 don't wait --- Compusa is selling out the remaining models of this type (previous was the M35S320 with the Banias 1.5 and no Trubrite).

Starting today (Sunday 9/26) through next Saturday (only as long as existing stock is available Compusa has the following pricing (retail price for model is $1999):

$1999 - 100 Toshiba mail in rebate - 150 Compusa rebate = $1749.99 -- the lowest I ever saw for this was $1799 a couple of weeks ago.

Compusa has this listed as clearance so Toshiba must be preparing a new prebuilt model within the M35 line. I know students disappointed as they wanted to custom order an M35 online and they stopped selling it due to heavy sales during the back to school period.

The add states clearance item -- while supplies last. No rainchecks. So if you want this specific model at this great price (and it is a multiformat DVD burner -- some others are only DVD- or DVD+, etc) then get one of these.

Note that Compusa has a poor return policy (with restocking fee unless defective) so if you want this one make sure you try out the keyboard, etc. before buying it.

Circuit City has sold this model as well but I don't see it at the website so they appear to be closed out there. If they still have some in the stores, however, you may be able to get them to pricematch Compusa if they have one in stock and you have the Sunday Compusa newspaper ad. Best Buy also might do this if they have them in stock and you have the ad (pricematch).