Dude, I'm not getting a Dell... I bought a Toshiba M55-S325 notebook PC

My current four-year old Toshiba Satellite notebook PC was really starting to get finicky and lacking horsepower and just seemed like it was on the verge of something not-good, so I decided last week to start looking for a new machine.  No hurry, but there are so many machines available.  Today I threw up my hands and decided that this was enough screwing around.  After reading all these notebook PC specs and looking at a herd of machines at CompUSA out here in Boulder, Colorado, I bit the bullet and "pulled the trigger":  I bought the Toshiba Satellite M55-S325 for a grand total of $1,676.46.  That's $1,399 plus Boulder tax plus discounted 2-yr screen and battery replacement "plan".  Here are the specs:

• 1.73 GHz Pentium M
• 512 MB
• 533 MHz FSB
• 100 GB (5400 RPM)
• 14" WXGA (1280x768) TruBrite
• 8x DVD SuperMulti Double Layer writer
• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
• V.92 modem
• 10/100 Ethernet
• XP Home
• 5.3 pounds

It's a nice small package and reasonably light.

I think it has a full trial version of MS Office on it, so I'll have to figure out how to upgrade my old Office 2002 most cheaply (including FrontPage).

It's a popular machine.  I got the last one in stock (besides the demo unit).  BUY.COM says "Temporarily Sold Out".

Here's a site with the announcement for the machine, Dated June 14, 2005.  I think that's the announcement for Toshiba's web availability for this model which was strangely blank on Tuesday when I checked after seeing the machine in the store on Tuesday. http://www.beststuff.com/article.php3?story_id=8450

It's Made in China.

I was surprised when the sales guy came out of the stock room with what seemed like a small box to be.  I though maybe that was the accessories box, but it was the entire system.  Quite light and small.

The M55-S3251 is identical but with XP Pro.

Mine is "Peacock Blue".  Copper and Gray are coming out later in the month.

It's not as powerful as I wanted, but the 17" screen was way too bulky and this model didn't have a 15" screen and the 2 GHz chip too expensive.  This should be good enough for me.  The disk seems like a really good deal.

I probably won't even take it out of the box until the weekend since a fair amount of configuration (e.g., Office) and data transfer will be required, but at least this one headache is now out of the way.

-- Jack Krupansky

New term: chasmic impedence mismatch

I've contrived a new term than can be used in both technical and non-technical contexts: chasmic impedence mismatch which means that you're trying to match up some entities, but there simply isn't a clean match, at all, but you still feel that somehow, a match should be possible, or at least desirable.  In fact the entities really are on wildly different wavelengths and unlikely to be able to communicate effectively unless some outside entity or force intervenes.

 

-- Jack Krupansky