Great Mobile Desktop Replacement

This is my third laptop and was purchased as a desktop replacement for business work in a small work area where a traditional desk top won't fit in to well. I do not do gaming and can not comment on the true high-end performance capability of the S611. However, with a 4200 RPM drive, I have my doubts about performance with disk intensive applications like games.

The 3.3 ghz processor and 17" inch screen limit the Li-ion 12-cell battery life to two hours (reportedly). There is no optional second battery available. So a $149 (USD) spare battery would be in order for true mobile applications. Which brings me to point out that this unit is way too large and heavy for most people's everyday portable laptop needs. It weighs around 12 lbs with power supply. I still use my older Compaq 15" for portable needs. I wouldn't even think of hauling the Toshiba around on business or long travel. Especially air travel. Car travel would be okay, since carrying it would not be far, long or frequent.

So now for what is really great with this unit. The screen-the-screen-the-screen. You just have to see it to appreciate WXGA true-bright technology. This is the primary feature for choosing the S611. Excellent color rendition from black-to-white points. The contrast is superb. Having color calibrated my desktop CRT screens for years, I was floored when seeing how accurate the colors are out-of-the-box with the S611. The wide-screen format is ideal for side-by-side application windows. Surely, DVD movies will be awesome. I use a laptop many hours a day. Even for basic application use like word processing, browser, etc., WXGA screens are easier on the eyes. I didn't expect this benefit when I bought the unit. It is simply a gorgeous screen and the major feature of this laptop.

The workmanship and design of the S611 is excellent. The keyboard pad has a great feel to it and is quiet. The controls make sense and also provide for built-in wireless on/off for security when around public wi-fi spots that you may wish to easily connect and disconnect from with a flip of a switch. Nice touch. The built-in wireless Super G connected at 108 Mbps with my home D-Link Extreme G wireless router. So now there is no more need for a PCMIA card for 108 mbps connections! Three 2.0 USB and 1 Firewire port make connectivity to different devices easy. Yes, and it has a modem and S video port. Mic and headphone jacks are provided. All ports are easily accessible.

Although, I really scratched my head over why no CF Card Reader in the combo media slot? I photograph with professional digital SLRs that use Type II CF card format; as many pro-sumer camera models do. Memory sticks and Smart Media are a small segment of device storage. Toshiba missed the mark here by leaving out CF card compatibility. Pro photographers would really like built in CF card reader functionality. They also carry laptops everywhere!

The Harman-Kardon sound is better than average for laptops. I don't know how you can have fantastic on-board sound on a laptop anyway. The 100gb drive is huge for most users and the speed is 4200 RPM for battery life conservation. I would have preferred a 5400 RPM 80gb hard drive for desktop type use. The 512Mb 2700 shared memory is surprisingly sufficient for multiple applications open and closing. In comparison, 512mb/1700 on my 2.2 ghz 5400 RMP in my older Compaq has moments of slow downs launching and closing with multiple applications open. When the price is right I will replace both 256mb memory sticks and go to two 512gb of memory for a total of 1gb. No urgent need for this though. Gamers will want to upgrade memory right-away for sure.

This model ships with WIN XP SP2. The WIN XP Pro model is the S612 model and everything else is the same as the S611.

The combo drive bay is nice. I have only burned a few CD's so far at max speed of 16x. The mouse pad is a bit touchy. The "Toshiba Touchpad Launch" utility was a pain to configure. I ended up disabling the irksome "launch pad utility" in the MSCONFIG/STARTUP in favor of the launch utility found in the touchpad driver setup. Couldn't figure out how to remove it completely. This was software utility overkill by Toshiba here. The "Config Free" utility is also there, but I set up my home 128 bit encrypted connection through the Windows Wireless Connection Wizard. The "Config Free" can easily be removed if you are familiar with setting up connections. If you are not savvy at this, the utility reportedly does it for you based on what internet/network connections are available.

I connected a Logitech USB Wireless Media Mouse and set the Logitech Mouseware to "not disable touchpad when connected" and I am able to use both devices while the mouse is connected. This allows cursor movement easier while using the laptop as a desktop.

The price I paid for the S611 from Circuit City.com was $1399 after rebates on 03/25/2005. That was a steal price for this model as of that date. Well below the street price. If I were to pay the regular price of $1799, it would still be worth it for the screen quality and mobile desktop performance. If my needs were for portability, I would spend the $1799 on a SWXGA for 1660 resolution on a 15" smaller foot print with everything else the same if needed, and, most likely, longer battery life of 4 hours.

So it is hard to give this unit a universal recommendation to everyone. I believe it all comes down to what the use of the laptop will be for someone. For my desktop purposes, it is the best value at the regular street price. For other uses, smaller 15" models may be the best value. However, if you choose this Toshiba model, you won't be sorry!