Toshiba Portege 7140CT

It came to pass in November of 2002 that we had something of a windfall. It wasn't a major thing, but it was a rather large sum of money. Since I had been using my old Toshiba 510CDT laptop for just under a year, I had come to the realization that I needed a faster machine. Not only did I need a faster machine, but I really needed a lighter machine. The old 510 has a built-in power brick and was not meant to be light in any sense of the word. Not only was it not light, but with the second bay battery in, it was downright heavy. I don't think it was quite 10lbs, but it was certainly closer to 10lbs than 5lbs. I'd been lugging the 510 everywhere for nearliy a year and I was tired of hauling it around.

This isn't saying it wasn't a great laptop, it was just a bit heavy for dragging back and forth every day from work. Remember that I was also riding a motorcycle for most of this time. Having this weighing down my shoulder bag was getting to be a bit much.

I digress

I had been thinking about what I wanted in a laptop for some time prior to our little windfall. Of all the things I needed to change, weight was priority number one, followed closely by speed. These were important first filters because they really ruled out a bunch of options and focused the field. With these priorities, I ruled out all so-called 'desktop replacement' laptops. These are laptops that emphasize having everything you'd ever want on a laptop at the expense of light weight and battery life. These are the laptops with 14" and 15" screens. These are also laptops that have more than one type of drive--commonly referred to as 'spindles'--on board. A two spindle laptop has a HDD and a CD-ROM drive and a 3 spindle laptop has both of these drives plus a floppy or zip drive or a second HDD or whatever. Since my old 510 had a 'select bay' that could fit a second HDD, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive or a second battery, I was pretty sure that I didn't need a second spindle on my next laptop. I rarely used or even wanted my CD-ROM drive in the bay. I almost always had a second HDD full of .mp3 files in it at work. At home I almost always had a second battery in for greater time wireless. I figured that my next laptop would have a big enough HDD that I wouldn't have to have a second HDD. As for battery life, I was hoping that a newer, smaller die-size processor would consume less power.

As for the speed question, since I wasn't going to spend a bucket o'cash on the new laptop, I would have to figure out what processor type was a real step-up in speed. Sure a P4 would have been nice, but it certainly wasn't necessary. I was coming from a Pentium 133 non-MMX processor, so just about anything above that would be an improvement. I wanted something that would be a real kick-in-the-pants performance-wise, not just an incremental change.

Since P4 was out due to price considerations, that left PII, PIII, Super Socket 7, Celeron and Duron processor in the running. I figured that processor speed was pretty nearly a constant, so it was largely up to the processor architecture and bus speed to determine my choice. Experience has shown me that any processor running at 100MHz on the front side bus is going to be leaps and bounds faster than anything running at 66MHz. It's only 33MHz, but it makes a HUGE difference. We run a ton of PII machines at work. PII 350, 400 and 450MHz processors with 100MHz front side bus are far faster than the earlier PII processors. PII 233, 266, and 333MHz processors just crawl comparatively. Most telling is the enormous difference between the 333 and 350 processors. The 350s are noticibly faster in all tasks. The difference is greater than the one between PII 400 and PIII 450. Go figure.

What all that preceeding blather was about was that I did NOT want a laptop with a 66MHz fsb. That ruled out anything slower than PII 350, most Super Socket 7 processors, Celeron and Duron processors. I also ruled out Super Socket 7 processor laptops because I have an AMD K6/2 550MHz with a 100MHz fsb that really isn't as fast as I'd hoped it would be.

There was a small problem with my processor choices. For how kick-ass I think a PII 400 processor is, there are relatively few laptops so equipped. I figure it's a heat dissapation problem. With their relatively large die-size and high clock speed, they do kick out wads of heat. That's not exactly what you want in a laptop processor. It seems that the only manufacturer that made these in any quantity was Compaq. I wanted more choices, more speed than a PII, and frankly, I really didn't want a Compaq. I'd had a fair bit of trouble with them at work and a compaq was the only laptop I'd owned so far that had flat-out died. My new laptop would have to be a PIII.

It seemed that there are quite a few laptops out there on the low end of PIII. There are tons of 500s and 650s. I figured I'd better keep it to 500 to keep the price down. I'd be missing out on the SpeedStep technology if I didn't get a 650, but that wasn't a major concern. Sure, it would have been nice, but I'd live if I didn't get it.

So I found myself looking for a thin-and-light PIII 500MHz laptop. A little research showed me that I had a wealth of choices. It all boiled down to the Fujitsu Lifebook S series, the Compaq M300 series, the Sony PCG-505 series, the Toshiba Portege 7xxx series, the NEC Versa LX series and various offerings from Dell, Gateway and HP.

The Fujitsu was the favorite of the bunch. I loved the look of the machine, the one that seemed most readily available was a PIII 650 with the SpeedStep technology and it not only was thin-and-light, but also had a bay where a guy like me could either put a battery, a DVD-ROM or a weight saver blank. I must say that that was mighty attractive.

The Toshibas were next. There were 4 in the 7xxx model I liked, and the 7140 was a PIII 500. I like Toshiba. They're not as flashy as Sony or Fujitsu, but with that lack of flash comes a very tough, stable and durable machine. I've been pleased with every Toshiba product I've owned and that includes 2 other Toshiba laptops and a Toshiba DVD player.

The Compaq M300 was next. It was abundant, it was small, I'd seen one up close before and most of them being sold on eBay (the place where I would be buying) had the MEU (that's peripheral wedge/slice/dock to you...) along with it.

Who wouldn't want a Sony? For the Gadgeteer in me, Sony products are just like crack. Sony makes some sexy stuff. The 505 was truly droolable, fairly durable, it was available in a wide range of processor speeds and my buddy Greg at work has one.

The NEC seemed to be the right one at the right time. When I had the dough in my hot, little hands, there were a number of these with the right stuff out there. It was an unknown as far as performance went, but I've never had any problems with the NEC stuff I've used at work.

The HP, Gateway and Dell options were all fine, just not very sexy. To be honest, I liked the preceeding ones far better, although the HP Omnibook 6000 seemed to be fairly abundant.

I started to watch auctions to their close on eBay. I got a feel for what was selling for what and figured out that I might be able to afford the Fujitsu, Toshiba, Compaq and NEC options pretty easily. My budget was $500.00 and this should buy a person a lot of laptop on eBay. I also decided that the Sonys were just a bit too pricey than the others. I was also doomed to find that the Fujitsu that I had my heart set on was to be too expensive as well.

When the bidding started I had it pared down to just the Fujitsu and the Toshiba. I had my reservations about the Fujitsu's smaller than full-size keyboard and about the Toshiba's seemingly smallish 196Mb of RAM limitation. I really wanted and actually needed about 256Mb of RAM. I watched as the two Fujitsu Lifebook S laptops what were on bid were slowly creeping up in price. I bid, but I was out-bid immediately. Nuts. The one I wanted was fully decked out with the maximum RAM, a 30Gb HDD and came with a bag, all the stuff and a bag. I bid my max and I didn't even out-bid the current bidder. I called my wife to see if I could bust the budget. She said yes.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

I waited until there was less than 30 seconds left in the auction. I bid my new max, $650.00. I'm high bid! YESSSS! I hit refresh a couple of times and at the 2 second mark, I'm no longer the highest bidder. The auction ended with someone else taking the laptop home with them for $652.00.

As Kevin Cline said in "A Fish Called Wanda": DISAPPOINTED!!!

I found that I had over-invested myself in that laptop. Shoot. There was another laptop in decidedly less nice a shape, and it was still less than my max, but I took my being out-bid as a sign that I just wasn't going to have a Fujitsu this time around.

10 minutes later a Toshiba 7140CT Pentium 500MHz was going to end. The price was still in the high $300s It had all the extras, two batteries and the DVD/network slice as well. It was a private seller with a good rating. I did some last-minute checking on the Toshiba's stats and found out that the stats brochure on Toshiba's site was wrong about the maximum RAM it could support. It could do 384Mb of RAM. Finding that out pretty near sealed it. I felt warm confidence seeping into my person again. I was going to get that particular Toshiba. I waited until 15 seconds were left and bid my new max. To my surprise, the price never went over $511.00. And that's how much I bought it for.

I paid right away and as luck would have it, I got it on a Friday afternoon so that I could play with it all weekend.

I haven't mentioned it before, but I absolutely LOVE this laptop. I was kinda iffy about having a 13" screen (the Fujitsu had a 12" one), but it's been very nice having that extra real estate. I instantly kitted it out with the max ram and replaced the 6Gb HDD with a brand-new IBM Travelstar 40Gb 5400rpm drive. I replaced the installed Windows XP with Windows 2000 and I've not had a single bit of trouble with it since.

Heck, I've liked this one so much, I bought it's slightly newer and slightly better brother, the Toshiba Portege 7220CTe. I maxed the RAM out and also fitted that with a new, fast HDD with lots of cache. There's not many differences between these two laptops. The 7220 has twice the video RAM (8Mb vs 4Mb) on a slightly better chip and has a PIII 650 instead of a PIII 500. That's not much of a diffenence until you factor in the fact that the 650 also has SpeedStep performance throttling abililty for extending battery life. That was key. The new laptop does much better on the batteries than the old one does. I've had the "new" one for almost a year and it still rocks.