6. Qosmio As Standalone Media Player

QosmioPlayer is one of the Toshiba software elements bundled with all Qosmio models. It took one of your reviewers an embarrassingly long period of trial and error to figure out that one must push the TV or DVD/CD player icon buttons at the top of the unit's control surface instead of pushing the normal "on" button to launch these applications.

Nowhere could we find this documented in any of the literature that shipped with the machine, but we did find an extremely handy document on the Toshiba Web site - namely the Qosmio G25 Series User's Guide. If you buy one of these units, and your packaging lacks this document, do yourself a favor and download it right away. We used the Ask IRIS Online tech support search service, and it turned this item up at the top of its search list. Use the Adobe Reader's search function to find "using QosmioPlayer" and you'll be all set. That's where we also found out that "the computer must either be off or in Hibernation mode for QosmioPlayer to start."

That lesson learned, we tested both capabilities with good results: push the TV button to watch TV, or push the DVD/CD player button to listen to a CD or watch a DVD outside of Windows MCE. Playback starts instantly, and sound quality is the same on the unit itself as inside Windows. But we learned that an additional adapter was necessary to get digital output from the SPDIF out into an external digital speaker rig or entertainment center.

One question that remains is why would you want to do this. After all, you get none of the supplementary metadata, cover art, or other information that Windows so cheerfully provides. You also lose any ability to record TV programs, or to manage DVD or music collections. To us, the biggest loss in this transaction is access to the MCE Program Guide, which has become an essential tool in our TV-watching behavior. The only thing we can figure is that the Qosmio uses less battery power when running the player application, perhaps by keeping disk drive and CPU use to a minimum while it's running. But because you lose so many of the capabilities that Windows MCE provides, we found ourselves wondering why this software is necessary.

Testing

We use four test suites to benchmark mobile computer battery life and performance, BAPCo's MobileMark 2005 and SYSmark 2004 SE and FutureMark's PCMark05 and 3DMark05. When a computer doesn't have the necessary graphics features to support higher end graphics or supports such graphics very poorly, we do not run the 3DMark05 benchmarks. We also test laptops displays for brightness, uniformity of brightness and contrast.

We perform all of the above tests with a fresh operating system installation and only the drivers and utilities required for basic functionality of the computer. This includes network, sound, display and, when necessary disk drivers. We also use the manufacturer's power saving utilities to assure maximum battery life in the MobileMark 2005 tests.

We tested the Qosmio both as a fully functional factory installed Windows Media Center computer and with a fresh operating system. We present only results with the fresh operating system. Results with the factory installed system were lower; this is not surprising, given that a number of background processes eat CPU and disk time as well as RAM on a Media Center computer.

For more on our tests see How We Test Laptop and Notebook Computers for Home and Office .