back to article Toshiba Portégé Z830-10N 13.3in Ultrabook

The last time I tested a Toshiba laptop, it had a glowing orange screen and the keyboard rattled like a box of Lego. Come to think of it, newspapers at the time were scaring readers about ‘house parties’, so it was quite a while ago. So perhaps you can imagine how utterly charming the pretentiously named Portégé Z830-10N …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow..

    £1080, and you get a lovely glossy 1366x768 screen powered by wonderful integrated intel graphics...

    Err, no thanks.. You're paying about £700 for the form factor of this machine..

    1. Piro Silver badge

      Re: Wow..

      First comment, and before I even read the review, I could see it was 16:9, you can always tell because they put horribly thick bezels top and bottom instead of buying a 1440x900 panel like they should for this form factor.

  2. Adrian Jones
    FAIL

    Toshiba? No.

    I'll never buy a Toshiba after the rubbish design of my P100-429 which had hinges so bad that they tore themselves to pieces (and the lid too) in normal use.

  3. Wang N Staines

    i3 > £1k ... aving a larf aren't ye?

  4. Tom Chiverton 1
    Linux

    'nix

    Could you stick a recent LiveCD in and lets us know if it works ??

    1. Arnold Lieberman

      Re: 'nix

      'nux, surely?

  5. The New Turtle

    It does seem a tad expensive for what you get.

    Nice that it doesn't need you to cart a bunch of connectors about though - that will sell it to a lot of people who don't want to carry to take a bag full of 'accessories' when working in different places. "But it's a laptop" I hear you say. Well, yes it is, but many people use laptops as readily transportable computers that you can just plug into the nearest screen and keyboard, only using the built in screen as a last resort.

  6. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

    You make a good point that Business does not need bleeding edge performance. You also applaud this machine for having proper ports, another good choice for a business machine. Yet you fail to understand that mentality when it comes to the screen. Tight viewing angles are just what you want on a plane to keep your neighbour from reading your screen - Reg FAIL. Focussed light output also has a positive impact on power consumption of the screen and hence battery life - Reg FAIL. You should be roasting the Tosh for having a glossy screen which is best for videos and DVDs, matt is better for real work - Reg and Tosh FAIL. You also overlook the dismal vertical resolution and DVD-centric aspect ratio, another Reg and Tosh FAIL.

    1. Bassey

      Re: FAIL

      "Tight viewing angles are just what you want on a plane to keep your neighbour from reading your screen".

      The review specified that it was the verticle viewing angle that was sensitive (hence the bit about lifting and lowering the lid). I don't know what kind of scary-ass airlines you fly with but the day my nearest neighbour is sat such that they are looking over or under me is the day I walk to New York.

      Commentard FAIL

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      You could've put this nicely and then the world and his wife wouldn't have downvoted the motherloving heck out of you.

  7. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    FAIL

    I thought Apple was supposed to be the company selling "overpriced" kit?

    Seriously, who the hell would buy this laptop?

    Apple's cheapest 13" MacBook Air comes with a much better display, with a higher 1440 x 900 resolution, a proper unibody case that doesn't flex, a lid you can open easily with your fingers without the need for additional tools, longer battery life, a Thunderbolt connector that lets you connect to both an external display and a number of data connectors with just one cable (Apple's 27" display also includes a bunch of other ports, acting like a docking station), and Apple bundles software people might actually want to use, and which has a refreshing lack of endless, annoying, pop-ups.

    Oh yes: you also get a 1.7GHz mobile Core i5, instead of the i3 in this pile of Tosh.

    All for a whopping... £19 more.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Seriously, who the hell would buy this laptop?"

      Someone that needs a laptop for actual work, and not just for posing / dicking around?

      1. Sean Timarco Baggaley

        Re: Re: "Seriously, who the hell would buy this laptop?"

        So Windows is magically "better" for work than a BSD UNIX-derived OS?

        I can only assume you hold the same opinion of GNU / Linux distributions too, as anything those can do, OS X can do too.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I thought Apple was supposed to be the company selling "overpriced" kit?

      It can be found for a more reasonable £870 online: http://preview.tinyurl.com/8ydvtcu

    3. Van
      FAIL

      You thought right.

      Add approx £200 to equip the Air with the same ports the reviewer bigs up. Plus no USB 3 on the mac. Thats already the price of another shiny gadget to bring it up to spec.

      Apple might have the better software, but who cares when this whole market is aimed at fashion victims and show offs. Home computing never used to be like this. I'll stick to hackingtoshing a £400 old school laptop and put up with this flexing of cases mystery that seems to have everybody concerned all of a sudden.

      1. Sean Timarco Baggaley

        Re: You thought right.

        "Apple might have the better software, but who cares when this whole market is aimed at fashion victims and show offs. "

        How old are you? Six?

  8. Festimo
    FAIL

    Windows

    Seriously, if it's a 'business' laptop why do they supply windows home premium???? HP ship their business laptops with windows professional. Maybe toshiba don't use exchange or domains in their organisation.

  9. Tim Jenkins

    "...designing their notebooks to be difficult to open..."

    Because it does wonders for the battery life?

  10. Fuzz

    another ultrabook another rubbish screen

    I think this would be my choice of ultrabook, I can get it for a decent price and it has a good selection of ports and a proper SSD, only Toshiba decided to fit it with a stupid low resolution screen.

  11. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    I keep reading Z830 as Z380 - ooo, wonderful, I can boot native CP/M on it ;)

  12. I_am_Chris
    Thumb Down

    Short working day

    I don't know about you but my working day is certainly longer than 5.5 hours, especially if I'm travelling. Added to the really poor screen resolution for a machine at this price, this is *not* a real business laptop.

    A 13" Air is far superior in performance, usability and longevity. AND it is cheaper! An extra USB port would be handy and carrying about adaptors is a bit of a drag, but these are minor issues.

    What's more important not needing a display adaptor or having laptop that is still working after 6hrs+? The Air is a *proper* business laptop.

    1. Aaron Em

      Re: Short working day

      Where do you work that you can't get to a power socket for six hours in a row? Essex?

      1. Matt_payne666
        Devil

        Re: Short working day

        Oi!! us essex folk wknow all about powersockets.... its the norfolkians that are afeared of the sinister 3 pronged devil...

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  14. Aaron Em

    Why LEDs on the front edge?

    "Why not put the LED status icons there [above the keyboard] instead?"

    Because it's nice not to have to open my laptop in order to see whether it's awake or if I need to see why the disk is going nuts. Opening the lid is a bit tricky, fair enough -- on the other hand, given how light these things are, if it were easy to open you'd be complaining about the loose hinges.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Over priced & Under spec'ed

    I've always liked Toshiba & have one of their netbooks somewhere. However, am I the only one who thinks that these Ultrabooks & entry level MacBook Airs have too little storage ? At these prices 256GB is the minimum for me. Of course, I could connect an external drive, USB memory, access a network drive or go the streaming route. But why bother ? Far better to have a 500GB or 1TB hard drive for "my stuff" of the moment. At these prices there's really only one option & it won't be running Windows. I'll be very surprised if the iPad 3 doesn't max out at 256GB, costing an arm & a leg in the process !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Over priced & Under spec'ed - Correction

      Should have read:

      >>'ll be very surprised if the iPad 3 doesn't max out at 128GB, costing an arm & a leg in the process !<<

  16. Goat Jam
    WTF?

    Charcoal Grey

    Is nearly black.

    You knew that right?

    Is your camera busted perhaps?

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