This is part of a series of posts I am going to create about the Toshiba Qosmio G40. Toshiba were kind enough to loan me one for review.

First things first the picture above is not an optical illusion the Toshiba Qosmio G40 is large, very large the screen is 17″. Now the screen maybe 17″ but the laptop lid measures a whopping 20.5″.

This laptop is stuffed with all the latest desirables:- HD-DVD (writer), a beautiful Hi-Definition 17″ 1080p screen. Intel Core2Duo 2.4Ghz, 400gb Hard Disk, 2 Gig of Ram, Harman Kardon speakers, HDMI out, Biometric security and a webcam  etc.

It shipped with: The Laptop, Power Cable, Windows Media Centre Remote, RCA Component Cables (to a 3.5m jack) and a HDMI cable. The installed operating system was Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit)

Out of the box the installed programs looked like this:

Windows Vista Ultimate took a good 20-25 minuets to install, rebooting several times during the process. Not a great user experience, but that’s not Toshiba’s fault.

Once reaching the Windows Desktop a total of 65 Processes were running in the background. Slightly more than I would like but typical for a consumer laptop.

The Windows Vista Experience Index out of the box is 4.5

Now something that is throwing me is the Device Manager reports two separate CPU’s

Normally I am used to seeing Core 2 Duo CPU’s listed identically, like below

However on the Qosmio it lists a T7300 and a T7700.

Ill see if I can find out the story behind that.

My everyday laptop is a Dell XPS M1210 12″ Form Factor Laptop.

I’m not seriously comparing the these two but it is important to gauge the sheer size of the Qosmio

I would say the size of the Toshiba is one of its strong points, the audio/visual experience for example is the best I have encountered from a laptop. This is to be expected from a device in this price range.

That’s all I have time for in today’s post. But tune in later for:-

Does it Game?

What is watching HD-DVD on the Qosmio G40 like?

Is 1080p on a 17″ screen that meaningful?

And More…

Offical Link: Qosmio G40 Series