Internet, software, now and laptops - for free!

Preamble first

Once upon a time (literally three years ago) I was looking for WiFi in my native city of Kaliningrad (almost in the very west of Russia). At that time, the coverage was single, literally 5-7 declared points per half a million of the population, of which there were 2.5 workers. I found, swore at a low transfer rate, bought expensive cards, and swore again. There were almost no alternatives: the dedicated line cost a lot of money (at the level of Moscow prices they offered speeds almost 10 times lower), modem access ... (well, let's not deal with necromancy :). In general, the situation was, to put it mildly, crap.

Footnote: Kaliningrad is famous for its non-freezing port and the territorial isolation from the "big" Russia: now it can be reached (without a passport) only by air and water.

But even then, I believed that life would change for the better and predicted that in 2-3 years catering establishments with free (and working) WiFi would appear. And so it happened: in the spring and summer of 2009 in the city earned at least 1 point with free wireless Internet. In the heart of the city. The Internet has become available to everyone.

Preamble two

At the “Electronic Commerce” conference (literally two weeks ago, which took place), the “Ksan” agency announced unprecedented generosity unprecedented promotion: get a laptop for free. Yes, also there was an article on Habré . This was all done with the generous hands of BeCompact .

I was lucky: I was just sitting on the right stream (because the article on Habré somehow somehow lost sight of) and was able to quickly navigate.

Well, yes, the laptop was not given forever, but for (almost) a week. But about this, in fact, the main part:
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Test drive a laptop Toshiba Qosmio

First impression: a powerful machine. In all senses. Declared weight: 4.3 kg (+ charger, standard from Toshiba, weighs more than a kg). Total: one and a half times heavier than my current Toshiba Satellite P-100 (weight with charging is less than 4 kg).

Second impression: Vista must die! I still do not remember such an insane amount of reboots during installation. For three hours the laptop was brought into more or less working condition.

Third impression: Vista must live! I managed to set up a wireless network between two laptops on it for “2 clicks”, on XP I was picking for about 15 minutes, but I couldn’t do anything intuitively (yes, I’m not a professional system administrator :).

The fourth impression: the sound system is just super. In this photo (top view), 4 columns are clearly visible: 2 ordinary (in front, probably covered with plugs in the form of flames), 2 - for high frequencies (near the monitor, on the red panel). Unfortunately, there is no photo of the bottom surface, but there is a subwoofer.

The fifth impression: the disk slows down :( It’s clear that all the system’s performance rests on hard disk operations, so there’s no performance increase in applications (or parts of them) that actively use it (for example, loading browsers or loading games) The RAM (4 GB), the processor and the video card (just about it below) work perfectly well, and on the second evening all available episodes of the sixth season of House were revised.

The impression of the sixth: "wings" on the sides of the monitor they rule. In the photo above, small semicircular protrusions are noticeable at the edges of the monitor - this is what they are. Perfectly limit the viewing angle and protect from excessive light. Speaking of light: the default for Toshiba Qosmio is a very bright and clear picture. It is regulated, just for those days, while this laptop was used, the brightness did not turn off.

The seventh impression: the laptop is loud and not very comfortable. The keyboard panel (seen in the comparison) is one and a half times higher, it is not so convenient to type texts (it is understandable: the main purpose is multimedia). The noise is not louder and quieter than the Toshiba Satellite (although I expected the use of more powerful cooling technologies, the fan turns on at about the same frequency: apparently, the heat output is also quite significant).

The eighth impression: overall performance at altitude. Video / sound work on 5+ (it was even possible to drown out the neighbor’s drill, which was used during working hours). Toys (I ran King's Bounty: Princess in armor ) also fly (all settings are at the maximum - the picture display speed is higher than on the Toshiba Satellite), the video card is very smart (GeForce 9700M, 512Mb). Yes, for this special thanks to "Ksan" - at the weekend it was, than to entertain myself :)

Last impression: at night this colossus shines with all red lights. With unaccustomed can be scared :)

Options

Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 320Gb (5400rpm) SATA
Screen Resolution: 1440x900
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS 512Mb
Weight: 4.3 kg

In general, we can summarize that Toshiba has turned out an excellent multimedia laptop, which, unfortunately, is extremely inconvenient to carry around (this is its only drawback, except for the slow hard drive).

Acknowledgments

Sent to the online store BeCompact and the agency "Ksan" . It seems to me personally that such actions in five years will become as ordinary as the test drives of cars. Therefore, it will be possible to live without the Internet (finding it in public places), and without a laptop (using promotions, and storing all data on the Internet).

PS sorry for the quality of some photos: only the phone was at hand