Argos Toshiba c660 Laptop

littlesthobo

In the market for a new laptop and was looking at this in Argos today and thought it was a good price reduced to €449. Was hoping someone more knowledgeable on here would know how good this is. Any opinions


http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/5084760.htm

Zonda999

Ignoring the fairly miserly 2gb ram, its a very good deal indeed. Toshiba make solid laptops, them and asus are apparently the most reliable brands.

It isnt the greatest looking laptop though tbh, and theres no hdmi port. In its favour though, it has a very up to date, and quick processor, and that ram is easily upgraded to 4gb, ram is cheap nowadays.

T0mmyM

Seems like a good deal. A capable machine.

I think this is the model
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1281472/toshiba-satellite-c660-11k


http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/30/toshiba-announces-no-frills-satellite-c660-laptop/

littlesthobo

Cheers for the reply's guys. Not looking for something world beating, had a couple of dells so far and my experience hasn't been great but herself has a Toshiba for nearly 6 years now so id go along with them being solid. Mostly just be using it for internet. Got it reserved anyways and have €150 in one for all vouchers i need to use so i think i go for it.

sweetie

what about this samsung? - can be got for £410

or this toshiba?

Alanstrainor

sweetie wrote: »

what about this samsung? - can be got for £410

Where>?

opr

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Where>?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056187531

Opr

littlesthobo

Price dropped this morning €419 now

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partNumber/5084760.htm

sweetie

Zonda999 wrote: »

Ignoring the fairly miserly 2gb ram, its a very good deal indeed. Toshiba make solid laptops, them and asus are apparently the most reliable brands.

It isnt the greatest looking laptop though tbh, and theres no hdmi port. In its favour though, it has a very up to date, and quick processor, and that ram is easily upgraded to 4gb, ram is cheap nowadays.

how does one upgrade the ram? Is it a case of buying an extra 2 gig or do you need to replace the 2gig with 4 gig?
or would one be better paying an extra e120 for the next model with 640gig hd and 4gig ram?

Irish Halo

It depends, from what I can work out on Crucial the laptop could have two slots which can take 4GB each, so you can upgrade to a maximum of 8GB (hard to tell which model it is exactly from the Argos listing but THINK it is the Satellite C660-155).

A lot of manufacturers will get 2GB of RAM by putting a 1GB chip in each slot so to get to 4GB you would need to buy 2 2GB chips and throw out (sell?) the two 1GB chips in the machine (there are no 3GB chips AFAIK). On crucial 4GB would cost ~£37.50 so an extra ~€80 doubles your hard drive.

What's the deal with the new processors intel are bringing out does anyone know? will it outdate machines like this much?

roboshatner

a friend told me to stay away from the i3 processors

Zonda999

They wont out date too much, and anyway, it'll take another few months for the i3 sandy bridges to make their way into laptops and when they do arrive they'll be a lot more than 420€, thats for sure. I imagine the jump with sandy bridge for i3's to be similar to the jump for basic core 2 duo's to i3's this time last year, about 25% in that case.

In that case it wont outdate laptops like this too much at all, in any case, this laptop has the very latest of the non sandy bridgw i3's.

@roboshatner, i cant see why. For the majority of people, an i3 is plenty sufficient for their needs. For gaming obviously, this is no good because of the integrated graphics but an i3 with dedicated graphics can do as a gaming laptop though.Remember, the i3's were meant to take over the basic core 2 duo's, and they upped the benchmark at the same time

kaizersoze

2 gig of ram is plenty for windows 7. In any case going above 3 gig is pointless if it's the 32bit version of windows and even with the 64bit it'd be marginal.

Effluo

roboshatner wrote: »

a friend told me to stay away from the i3 processors

Tell your mate to stop pretending he knows something about computer hardware.


http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1281472/toshiba-satellite-c660-11k
This link which was posted earlier will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the computer.

The model they review is not the exact same, but it only scores 3/5 due to a lack of expansion ports. Particularly the fact it only 2 usb ports could really be a pain, but can easily be got around with a small cheap usb hub. Personally I wouldn't call it a deal breaker.

At this price point the processor is great, the ram is not so much and the graphics are standard latop and will not play many 3d games well(if at all). Lacks other features such as hdmi and other ports.

I'm actually in the market for a laptop right now just for web browsing and creating documents, but for this price I'd want hdmi, just maybe more ram and I'd let the processor suffer a bit.

Rsaeire

At €449 this was a good deal, but at €419 it's even better. The i3s are more than capable of carrying out the tasks of most users, e.g. web browsing, Skype, Microsoft Office etc, and will even allow playback of all HD video codecs; which will be helpful for those looking to use this laptop to playback all their 720p/1080p movies and TV shows. Also, as Zonda999 mentioned, 2 GB of RAM is plenty in a laptop of this spec, as it's not as if you'll be gaming or using a lot of memory intensive applications. In saying that, it's still possible to upgrade the RAM down the road if required.

The one thing I noticed about this laptop which may, or may not, be an issue to some is that it only has 2 USB ports. Something to keep in mind if you plan on using a wireless mouse and, for example, an external hard drive that requires 2 USB ports for power.

nem2ace

its down to 419 euro now. when i reserved it last night the price changed. i am buying this for my mother and looks a good laptop. if it didn't have the integrated graphics i would keep

MASTER...of the bra

Rsaeire wrote: »

The i3s are more than capable of carrying out the tasks of most users, e.g. web browsing, Skype, Microsoft Office etc, and will even allow playback of all HD video codecs; which will be helpful for those looking to use this laptop to playback all their 720p/1080p movies and TV shows.

Are you sure this laptop would have no problem with 1080p playback?

Rsaeire

MASTER...of the bra wrote: »

Are you sure this laptop would have no problem with 1080p playback?

I'm positive. You can see exactly what video codec support the Iron Lake GPU, used in the i3 mobile CPUs, has by looking at the Intel GPU table here. As you can see, it shows the "Core i3-3x0M" as fully supporting MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, i.e. all HD video formats supported by Blu-ray. This would, in turn, also mean that files encoded correctly using the H.264 codec, such as mkv files, would be supported.

Additionally, you can see that this particuar Sony E Series laptop uses the i3-370M and also comes with a Blu-ray drive.

MASTER...of the bra

Sony Laptop

Screen
Screen Type
VAIO Display
Diagonal Size (in)
15.5
Diagonal Size (cm)
39.5
Aspect Ratio
Wide (16:9)
Resolution
WXGA 1366 x 768
Max Resolution External Display
1920 x1200


Graphics
Graphic Card Name
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5470 Graphics
Video RAM memory (MB)
512
Total Graphics Memory
Approx. 2231MB
Comments
* Total Available Graphics Memory refers to the classification of graphics memory, which varies depending on the operating condition, version of device driver and system memory size.

The Sony comes with a graphics card and with a Max Resolution External Display of 1200p?

Either way would the OPs Laptop get mad hot playing 1080p?

Rsaeire

You're right, I missed that; apologies.

The Gateway® NV59C09u comes without a discrete GPU but comes with a Blu-ray drive; it's reviewed here. It only uses the integrated GPU of the i3-330M in order to playback Blu-ray discs, so heat won't be an issue; as such, the OP's laptop should also be fine.

faral

when I see any deal from argos Im very very reluctant.and this is another case that so called "deal" is not a deal at all....folks the price stated are now the usual price for these maichnes.moreover for a better price u will have the same if not better specification in other countries and for instance in poland all toshiba`s laptops come with 2 year warranty including 1 year demmage.here you only 1 year.I would avoid to buy any computer in this shop

phormium

Excuse my ignorance, but would this package I want to buy run on the Argos machine, specs are as follows

'Microsoft Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows 7
Your computer must be up to date on all Microsoft updates and patches, including Service Pack 2, and the optional update for .NET Framework 3.5.
Internet Explorer required to run installation as follows'

discombobulate

phormium wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance, but would this package I want to buy run on the Argos machine, specs are as follows

'Microsoft Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows 7
Your computer must be up to date on all Microsoft updates and patches, including Service Pack 2, and the optional update for .NET Framework 3.5.
Internet Explorer required to run installation as follows'

It will indeed. Thats very basic requirements

passive

Went and bought this today. Was about to get it for 420 when i saw that it was 540 for the same machine with 4gb ram and a 640 hard drive. Don't know a huge amount about specs or the cost of memory but it seemed like a good price, so went with that.
It also comes with 2 years international warranty, so I'm not sure what the bizarre anti argos post above is about... Thanks for linking to this anyway, helped make a speedy purchase instead of humming and hawing (how do you spell that?) for weeks!

Rsaeire

passive wrote: »

Went and bought this today. Was about to get it for 420 when i saw that it was 540 for the same machine with 4gb ram and a 640 hard drive. Don't know a huge amount about specs or the cost of memory but it seemed like a good price, so went with that.
It also comes with 2 years international warranty, so I'm not sure what the bizarre anti argos post above is about... Thanks for linking to this anyway, helped make a speedy purchase instead of humming and hawing (how do you spell that?) for weeks!

You could have bought a 640 GB 2.5" hard drive and 4 GB of RAM for about €85 incl. P&P online. With that said, by you spending more you essentially just saved yourself some work; and a potential headache if you're not familiar with swapping out components.

passive

Rsaeire wrote: »

You could have bought a 640 GB 2.5" hard drive and 4 GB of RAM for about €85 incl. P&P online. With that said, by you spending more you essentially just saved yourself some work; and a potential headache if you're not familiar with swapping out components.

Hmmm... Definitely wouldn't be familiar with that, but numbers like that probably would have swayed me into learning... Nevertheless, it's for the girlfriend, and not enough of a difference to make me regret it, given the lack of hassle! Cheers.

oneweb

Don't have time to see if it's here already

508/4760 419.99eur is model C660-1F1
508/4801 539.99eur is model C660-1D7 (or -ID7)

Annie22

I've just seen a Toshiba C660 laptop in Littlewoods for €339 but with only 1gb RAM, I'm only looking for a laptop to watch telly on just wondering if this would be a good deal

Kevvv

I opted for this about a month ago now
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/packard-bell-ts11hr039-15-6-laptop-black-10783798-pdt.html

Really quick, unbelievably quick in fact. Have no complaints about it whatsoever, second gen i5 with 3GB of ram. Not a whole of ram, but more than enough to run with an i5. Really good value, in my opinion.

DermotOH

Save €10.00

Not much of a bargain

newfrontier

This has dropped again in Argos ..what is the verdict on the laptop... looks like a good price for a basic Tosh...anyone had a bad experience?

Liam Byrne

Irish Halo wrote: »

It depends, from what I can work out on Crucial the laptop could have two slots which can take 4GB each, so you can upgrade to a maximum of 8GB (hard to tell which model it is exactly from the Argos listing but THINK it is the Satellite C660-155).

A lot of manufacturers will get 2GB of RAM by putting a 1GB chip in each slot so to get to 4GB you would need to buy 2 2GB chips and throw out (sell?) the two 1GB chips in the machine (there are no 3GB chips AFAIK). On crucial 4GB would cost ~£37.50 so an extra ~€80 doubles your hard drive.

Huh? Hard drive and RAM are two completely different things!

robk24

plus seems out of stock everywhere.....

Gurgle

newfrontier wrote: »

This has dropped again in Argos ..what is the verdict on the laptop... looks like a good price for a basic Tosh...anyone had a bad experience?

DID have been doing nice deals on Toshiba.

http://www.did.ie/Product/TOSHIBA-15andquot-LAPTOP-320GB-C660D19X/19422/28018.0.0

Compared to the Argos model, this has a weaker processor but much better graphics card.
-edit- and haggling gets you further in DID than Argos
- edit again - also, DID is Irish if that means anything to ya