4. Quick Test: Toshiba Qosmio G-15

The 17" display on the Qosmio G-15 offers 1440 x 900 pixel resolution.

Toshiba developed its Qosmio family of computers specifically as multimedia machines, with an emphasis on features and power. The Qosmio series includes an integrated analog TV tuner, and it can even drive a TV set either through its component or S-video outputs. But even without another TV attached, the Qosmio's 17 inch screen lets it serve nicely as a second TV or as a DVD player. Its Harmon Kardon loudspeakers and virtual surround sound output make it sound pretty darn good for a notebook. With 60 and 40 GB drives on board, there's enough space to store plenty of digital video recordings, or to support a sizable collection of digital music. The built-in DVD burner also stands ready to capture whatever multimedia or data its users might wish to offload from this machine.

The Qosmio is based on an energy-efficient Pentium M 745 processor and 512 MB of RAM. An Nvidia GeForce FX GO5700 offers some of the fastest graphics processing available on any notebook, and is up to the job of handling nearly all 3-D games available today. Both a wired (10/100) and wireless (802.11g) Ethernet interfaces as well as a 56-kbaud modem are built in. Accessories include an MCE remote control along with an external USB receiver suitable for linking up to a digital satellite receiver or a digital cable set-top box. The remote suffers from an omission of number keys, however, so that one must sequence up and down through the channels available to land on the right one rather than "dialing directly."

The Qosmio can play back video DVDs or music CDs through an integrated player, without booting into Windows MCE. In that case, though, the infrared receiver for the remote doesn't work from the external USB receiver, but uses the infrared receiver built into the front of the notebook instead. The built-in player doesn't offer an electronic program guide (EPG) like MCE either, nor can you use it to record anything. For those functions, you must boot into MCE first.

Although it's built around the Centrino chipsets, a 17" display and a weight of 9.5-plus pounds puts the G-15 outside the realm of a truly mobile PC. It was designed to not only replace an existing desktop PC, but to also do double-duty as a second TV set with a built-in DVR. Compared to other Media Center PCs, the Qosmio's biggest strengths are its quiet operation and its extremely quick start-up time from Standby Mode. On the minus side, the unit's undersized keyboard and high price may give pause to some prospective buyers.

It's too bad the Qosmio is limited to analog TV reception. A combination receiver that could also handle HDTV would really add to this unit's appeal. For a complete overview, you'll find the technical data on the Qosmio G-15 Notebook from Toshiba summarized in the following table.