Toshiba Satellite - T130-11H Vs T130-13Q

Basq

My girlfriend wants a small and portable laptop - but a netbook is out of the question. Bear in mind, her computer usage is minimal - bit of work of the Microsoft Office, Facebook, e-mail etc. No intense gaming or anything like that!

She's been eyeing my 13" MacBook as it's a perfect size and weight - so I'm think a 13" laptop would be ideal for her. But of course, it's not the standard 15" or 17" so they're in an odd price-range.

We were up in PC World and they've the Toshiba Satellite T130-11H for €530.. it looks pretty good although the processor is a single core, but it should be sufficient.

So I was browsing on Amazon - and they've the T130-11H on sale for £349.99 from a reputable Marketplace Seller (they will deliver here and it'll work out at about €450) but a couple of negative reviews of it online have me a bit nervous of it. There's the slightly better reviewed T130-13Q but that's an extra £35 for a larger HDD (320GB as opposed to 250GB) and is heavier.

T130-11H
T130-13Q

I'm thinking feck the negative reviews and pick up the T130-11H to be honest.. I'm always a stickler for reading reviews and living by them.

Would like some opinions from people here if possible, and alternatives (nothing over €500 if possible)!

CompFix

Check out the HP Pavillion DM3-1112SA. 1 suspect review but the rest seem ok.

edit: free delivery on it too.

Basq

CompFix wrote: »

Check out the HP Pavillion DM3-1112SA. 1 suspect review but the rest seem ok.

edit: free delivery on it too.

Thanks for that - looks good! But I'm a bit wary about HP Pavilion. One of my first laptops was a HP Pavilion and it was an utter disaster.. over-heating like a bastard and the hinges were in the back just outside of warranty, and ended up using a hard drive bracket to prop the screen up.

Back on topic - it has less RAM but the AMD Athlon as a processor. How's the AMD Athlon Neo X2 L335 as a processor? Heavy user of Intel only processors, so have had minimal exposure to AMD Athlon. The T130-11H will work out about the same price as this including shipping fee, so which would be a better buy?

CompFix

The previous HP issues were with Nvidia chipsets. Have a look around for a few reviews of it but imo it's a better machine then the 2 toshiba.

Basq

Ta CompFix.

Will look into this later in the week.. might pick up an extra 1GB of RAM for her to go in it as according to the review it's only using one-slot:

Memory: 2 GB DDR2 (1 x 2048 MB), 2 user accessible memory slots, supports up to 8 GB DDR2 memory

Might be matched-pairs however!

CompFix

basquille wrote: »

Ta CompFix.

Will look into this later in the week.. might pick up an extra 1GB of RAM for her to go in it as according to the review it's only using one-slot:



Might be matched-pairs however!

It says on Amazon that it has 2gb of memory so there'd be no real need to get any more.

Basq

Yeah.. running XP on 2GB of RAM would be sufficient. But I've found Windows 7 a tad more intensive!

But I'll get it and decide - she'll probably roll back to XP anyways.

CompFix

Drop the gui performance settings on 7 and it'll be fine.

Basq

Yeah, I'll give that a shot!

To be honest, my exposure to Windows 7 have been minimal. Have it on a Dell Studio Hybrid but I'm more of a Mac user.

Anyways, thanks for the advice and link CompFix.

youcancallmeal

What did you go for in the end basq? I'm looking at getting something like that as well.

Basq

youcancallme>al wrote: »

What did you go for in the end basq? I'm looking at getting something like that as well.

She bought this yesterday: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056006538

Turns out the possibility of purchasing a netbook in a girly colour (purple) far outweighed her aversion to a 10.1" screen earlier.

The netbook was good value though.

youcancallmeal

Ha sounds familiar. Doesn't matter how much you emphasise the benefits of Dual vs Single core etc the bright shiny colours win hands down.

Amaru KGB

Hi Basq,

I was in Harvey Norman earlier and seen the T130-11H for €599, it's a very slick machine and it would be a nice present for the girlfriend.

I taught that was pretty overpriced though so might buy on the internet. Do you know how reputable are Amazon for computers?

Basq

Amaru KGB wrote: »

Hi Basq,

I was in Harvey Norman earlier and seen the T130-11H for €599, it's a very slick machine and it would be a nice present for the girlfriend.

I taught that was pretty overpriced though so might buy on the internet. Do you know how reputable are Amazon for computers?

Well.. it's only available from a marketplace seller, but they've a great reputation (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/seller/at-a-glance.html?ie=UTF8&seller=A2L0UV81X3JLZ5)

I'd say it's worth taking the punt on it at that price.

Amaru KGB

basquille wrote: »

Well.. it's only available from a marketplace seller, but they've a great reputation (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/seller/at-a-glance.html?ie=UTF8&seller=A2L0UV81X3JLZ5)

I'd say it's worth taking the punt on it at that price.

Yeah I'm pretty tempted just to go for it. I also saw an Acer AS4810T Timeline reduced down to €400 in Argos. It seems pretty decent for that price, what you think?

http://www.argos.ie/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=30001&catalogId=1500002451&langId=-1&searchTerms=ACER+AS4810T

Sorry that Argos model isn't in stock anywhere, pity

Basq

Yeah.. that's nice for the price!

It's available 3 places in Ireland:

• Drogheda (Extra) - 2 left
• Dundalk Retail Park (Extra) - 1 left
• Portlaoise (Extra) - 1 left

Amaru KGB

Cheers Basquile, might ring them and see if they will be getting any in Dublin.

Iospir

Well forget Toshiba for a start. I spent €550 on a Satellite. I used it for about a total of 40-50 hours over a 15 month period and it just died after that. Spent more money getting it looked at but motherboard totally gone. Out of warranty by then of course.