Toshiba's Qosmio line of notebooks are the poster children for multimedia excellence. Usually loaded with the latest mobile technology from Intel, gorgeous and bright screens, Windows XP Media Center Edition, TV tuner, and lots of other multimedia goodies.
These days we're looking at the Qosmio G35-AV650,
the current middle-of-the-line Qosmio model available. The AV650 uses Intel's Centrino Duo platform, sporting the T2500 2.0GHz processor and 3945ABG wireless card. You get a higher resolution WUXGA (1920x1200) screen powered by NVIDIA's GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB of GDDR3 VRAM. Each port you could want is on this puppy, including HDMI video output perfect for watching HD-DVD movies on your high definition home theater. Speaking of HD-DVD of course, the Qosmio AV650 sports an optical drive capable of playing HD-DVD movies! Enticed by this feature filled Qosmio yet? Read on to find out what other surprises this laptop has in store!
Let's just put it this way: none. Weighing in at a hefty 10.1lbs, the only individuals wanting to tote this around are seeking a workout simultaneously. With dimensions of 16" x 11.6" x 1.79", you aren't likely to be able to open this up on your seatback tray in coach class on an airpline either. Any questions?
Like most entertainment electronics these days, the Qosmio is made to be pleasing in both form and function. The silver-on-black theme is attractive, but subtle. When you open the Qosmio, you'll notice the polished black interior reflecting back at you. The brushed silver mouse buttons & volume control, striking large speakers, and blue accent lights really stand out.
For the normal uses of a touchpad, the Qosmio has a standard one. The response is smooth and the buttons have the same shallow, solid click to them as the Portege M400 tablet. Where the Qosmio's touchpad truly excels is in its non-touchpad usage.
The Qosmio's toucpad has an alternate function. If you tap the icon with double arrows in the top right corner, it will light up the bright blue backlight on the touchpad and enable all of the secondary functions. The top row consists of E-mail, WiFi, and Print functions, with the bottom row all launching user-defined applications. On the right side where you would normally scroll, you can adjust the volume level as well. Along with this being neat feature really cool looking, it is functional as well.
As you can tell from the descriptions above, Toshiba's Qosmio is chock full of input & output ports. With plenty of USB ports, tons of audio/video inputs & outputs, and an HD-DVD drive, what more could one ask for on a multimedia machine? Well, regular video editors might appreciate a full-size 8-pin Firewire port given size really isn't a limitation here. Straight-up DVI output with a VGA adapter would be preferable than a VGA out, but you can always adapt the HDMI to DVI.
We really liked how Toshiba incorporated both Express Card and PC Card slots. Express Card isn't quite prevalent enough yet to offer everything a multimedia entusiast might want, so both standards are included for maximum compatibility.
Most people don't use 17" notebooks in their lap, but those who desire knee problems don't need to bother about burns. The Qosmio runs fairly cool, idling around 40 degrees Celscius and running around 50 C during moderate usage. We never noticed any hot spots on the bottom, but with a 1.73" thick chassis there should've been plenty of room to cool the already chilly Core Duo processor.
Since the Qosmio features dual hard drives, one would hope upgrading those could be done by the user. In fact, Toshiba makes the process very simple, as you can tell from the picture below. You can even easily access both RAM sticks on the underside. The CPU isn't easily accessible, but a resourceful owner could probably get to it. One could theoretically put in a Core 2 Duo were Toshiba to offer an updated BIOS (or the user could load the AV660's BIOS), but why would someone risk that on such an expensive laptop?
