Toshiba Qosmio X75 A7298 review: A desktop replacement that won’t break the bank—or your back

Toshiba Qosmio X75 A7298 $1,900.00 Toshiba's Qosmio X75 is loaded with high-end components and delivers impeccable performance. If you need a desktop-replacement laptop, this is definitely one to consider.

Most manufacturers throw weight considerations out the window when they set about designing a desktop-replacement notebook. Not Toshiba’s engineers. Despite packing a 256GB solid-state drive plus a 1TB hybrid hard drive, a Blu-ray burner (not just a player), Nvidia’s second-fastest mobile GPU, and a 17.3-inch high-res display, the Qosmio X75 A7298 weighs a modest 7.3 pounds.

It might sound odd to classify 7.3 pounds as modest. After all, the Qosmio X75 won’t even fit in some laptop bags. But considering that this laptop can play games, create and edit digital media, and handle pretty much any other task you’d normally rely on a desktop computer to perform, a 7.3-pound weight is pretty remarkable. After all, how easy would it be to lug a desktop PC, a 17-inch monitor, and an uninterruptible power supply from location to location?

Robert CardinToshiba packs desktop performance into a highly mobile machine. (Click to enlarge.)

Intel’s Core i7-4700MQ, a quad-core mobile CPU, forms the Qosmio X75's heart. It’s paired with 16GB of DDR3/1600 memory and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 770M mobile graphics processor (which has 3GB of GDDR5 memory all its own). A dedicated GPU is great for playing hard-core games, but it will speed other tasks too.

Demanding applications such as Photoshop, for instance, will tap the hundreds of microprocessor cores inside the GTX 770M chip to accelerate image processing. In the GPU-accelerated image-processing segment of our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite, the Qosmio X75 required just over 60 seconds to complete a task that Lenovo’s IdeaPad U430 Touch—which relies on integrated graphics—took more than 5 minutes to finish.

Toshiba’s Qosmio X75 A7298 delivered a Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 430, one of the best performances we've seen to date. (Click to enlarge.)

The display is bright and beautiful, but it isn’t a touchscreen (as is common with gaming laptops). Since I’ve grown accustomed to using touchscreens with Windows 8, I couldn’t stop myself from swiping my finger across the panel, which has a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, to bring up the charm bar. I’m sure I would eventually adapt to using the large touchpad for that. Lucky owners of a 4K television can output 4K video from this computer’s HDMI port. The HDMI 1.4 port is limited to a refresh rate of 24Hz, but that’s fine for movies—no one in their right mind would try gaming at 4K.

The chassis is wrapped in textured aluminum, painted flat black to give it the look of carbon fiber. An attractive (or garish—you be the judge) accent stripe, bright red and highly reflective, runs around the laptop’s edge.

You can play a blazing-fast game of BioShock Infinite at low resolution on the Qosmio X75. Crank the game up to 1920 by 1080 pixels with visual quality at the Ultra setting, and you'll still get nearly 30 frames per second. (Click to enlarge.)

The island-style keyboard is backlit with red LEDs to match the machine’s color scheme. The keys aren’t sculpted, but they offer long travel, so you don’t need to worry about unintentionally depressing them while your fingers are resting on the keyboard. When you’re playing a stealth game such as a Splinter Cell title, there’s nothing more frustrating than accidentally giving away your position because your hand grew heavy over the WASD keys (which Toshiba has helpfully labeled with arrow symbols).

The size of the display allows Toshiba to provide adequate space between the keys and to include an embedded numeric keypad, but it’s unfortunate that the arrow keys beneath the Enter key (and the function keys at the very top) are half-size.

Because the wrist rest sitting beneath the keyboard is especially wide at 4.5 inches, Toshiba was able to place a large (4.5 inches wide by 3.1 inches tall) and very responsive multitouch touchpad in this area. A large speaker grille resides above the keyboard, directly under the display. The Qosmio X75’s audio system, designed with the assistance of DTS and Harman/Kardon, is excellent: The speakers deliver crisp highs and deep, well-defined bass response.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Qosmio X75 deliver 2 hours, 22 minutes of battery life. That's impressive for a notebook that offers so much performance. (Click to enlarge.)

The Qosmio X75 has plenty of real estate to hold ports, and Toshiba took full advantage, placing two USB 3.0 ports and a gigabit ethernet port next to the Blu-ray burner on the left side. Two more USB 3.0 ports, separate mic and headphone jacks, VGA, and HDMI-out occupy the right side, and a multiformat media-card reader sits in front. I was disappointed, however, to see Toshiba give short shrift to wireless networking: A $1900 laptop deserves better than a single-band (2.4GHz) 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter.

I was surprised at how quietly the Qosmio X75 ran, considering all the high-performance hardware stuffed inside it. Less surprising is the brief battery life, though 2 hours, 22 minutes is still more than enough time to watch a full-length movie (not that this behemoth would fit on an airline tray table). This computer can do it all and anywhere, so it's a great choice for a desktop replacement.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of the 5 best Haswell notebooks as of September 2013.

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Acer Aspire V3 review: "Budget desktop replacement” needn’t be an oxymoron

It might seem as though every new Windows laptop has a bright, glossy touchscreen. After all, Windows 8 is a touch-centric operating system, and Intel requires any notebook powered by a fourth-generation Core processor to have a touchscreen. The hulking desktop-replacement models that gamers gravitate to, on the other hand, rarely have this feature. That omission has two reasons: First, gamers prefer to use wired mice or gamepads. Second, large touchscreens are expensive.

Acer’s Aspire V3 (model V3-772G-9402) isn’t necessarily a gaming machine, but it does have a 17.3-inch display (with resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels) and a powerful discrete graphics processor. Acer describes it as a “versatile entertainment powerhouse,” and its $1100 price tag puts it in budget territory for people who don’t mind lugging an 8-pound machine.

The absence of an SSD suppressed the Acer Aspire V3's overall benchmark performance numbers compared with the pricier Toshiba Qosmio. But its Haswell-class Core i7 processor and 12GB of memory helped it beat the older Asus VivoBook. (Click to enlarge image.)

It’s powered by one of Intel’s fastest fourth-generation Core (aka Haswell) processors, the Core i7-4702MQ; 12GB of DDR3/1600 RAM; and Nvidia’s third-fastest discrete mobile GPU, the GeForce GTX 760M. But Acer skimps on storage by equipping the machine with just a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. That component choice explains the Aspire V3’s somewhat unimpressive Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 177.

While that score marks the Aspire V3 as 77 percent faster than our reference machine, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, pricier gaming notebooks have delivered scores well north of 400. But when you look at some of the gaming benchmark results that go into that composite score, the Aspire V3 looks a little better. With Dirt Showdown and BioShock Infinite at resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and visual quality set to low, it delivered very playable frame rates of 65.6 and 69.7 frames per second respectively.

And having a discrete mobile graphics processor boosted its performance with demanding games. (Click to enlarge image.)

Spend an additional $800 to buy something like Toshiba’s $1900 Qosmio X75, on the other hand, and you’ll experience those games at 119.7 and 165.3 frames per second respectively (and at lower—but playable—frame rates at higher resolutions).

The Aspire V3 is an attractively designed, well-built machine constructed mostly from plastic, but with a finish that looks like brushed aluminum. Its island-style keyboard is well spaced, includes a numeric keypad, and delivers very good tactile feedback. But if you like to play in the dark, you won’t like the fact that it’s not backlit.

ROBERT CARDINThe Acer Aspire V3 has four USB ports, but only two are USB 3.0. A DVD burner is nice to have, but a Blu-ray player would be better. (Click to enlarge image.) 

Since it’s not a touchscreen, the 17.3-inch display has a nonglare finish (most touchscreens are highly reflective, which can be problematic if you’re using the computer near a bright light source). I didn’t miss the touchscreen, because the large multitouch clickpad supports most Windows 8 gestures. You can pinch to zoom, for instance, and swipe in from the right to reveal the charms bar and in from the left to switch application windows.

Don't plan to be away from a power source for more than two hours—that's about all the Acer Aspire V3's battery will last. (Click to enlarge image.)

The screen looks good, for the most part. It displays crisp, clean text and images with an accurate color balance. But I did notice a few issues with it: First, I saw some occasional shimmering, even in static images. Second, I had intermittent problems with the machine’s brightness setting: Occasionally, when I turned the computer on, the display would be set to maximum brightness and refused respond to changes (even when I changed the power scheme). A restart resolved the problem each time it happened.

ROBERT CARDINThe Aspire V3's other ports include gigabit ethernet, VGA, and HDMI-out. (Click to enlarge image.) 

The Acer Aspire V3-772G-9402 isn’t for everyone. It’s big and heavy, it’s a little clunky, and it doesn’t deliver top-shelf performance. If you’re looking for a powerful gaming laptop, or if you want to watch Blu-ray movies, Toshiba’s Qosmio X75 is the better choice. But if you need an inexpensive desktop replacement with a big, high-resolution screen, the Aspire V3 is one of the better choices on the market right now.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Notepad2 review: Syntax highlighting make this utility a good notepad replacement for coders

Notepad2 Line numbering and syntax highlighting are a few of the features that make this notepad replacement especially attractive to programmers.

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At first glance, Notepad2 doesn't have much to distinguish itself from WordPad, the standard Windows notepad. But it offers a number of features that can make it worth the upgrade.

The biggest feature is syntax highlighting. You can have various parts of programming code show up as different colors when code is incorrect, so you can see right away what needs to be fixed. The find-and-replace function really does make WordPad cringe in the corner with embarrassment when you see features here such as match the case, match the whole word and match the beginning of the word only. You can even drag and drop text onto Notepad2, something that regular WordPad definitely won't allow.

Notepad2 offers syntax highlighting, which makes coding much easier.

The one downside to Notepad2 is that it doesn't support tabs, when it comes to opening multiple files. You can open only one file at a time, which is extremely limiting and frustrating.  But when you stack that one disadvantage against all the advantages, tabs are something you can live without.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

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Lenovo plans to install Pokki's Start Menu replacement and app store on PCs

While Microsoft may have thought that it had overcome the negative reactions that accompanied Windows 8, the world's top PC manufacturer isn’t necessarily convinced.

Lenovo said Thursday that it will ship Sweetlabs’ Pokki, a utility that adds a replacement Start button plus a number of apps and discovery tools, on a number of Lenovo machines. Those will include IdeaPad laptops, ThinkPad laptops, and IdeaCentre desktops, within multiple regions across the world, the company said.

Acer made Pokki available on its own PCs in June, meaning that two of the top five OEMs will ship with the Pokki software preinstalled.

Lenovo’s choice to include Pokki on its machines doesn’t necessarily mean that users will be forced into using Sweetlabs’ Start Page alternative. But the Pokki Start button has a look and feel reminiscent of Microsoft’s earlier Windows OSes, which still appeal to a vast number of users. Microsoft reworked Windows 8.1—which is available in preview, and in final form in October—to allow more customization in the Start Screen, and to allow users to boot into the desktop if they so choose.

Microsoft did not imediately respond to requests for comment. Lenovo could not be reached for comment.

While Lenovo’s decision represents a vote of no confidence in Microsoft’s Windows 8 UI, the more interesting consequence is that Lenovo is now adding an alternative to the Windows Store. Although Microsoft recently topped 100,000 Windows 8 apps, it retooled its app store in the Windows 8.1 preview to make them more discoverable. Pokki’s store provides traditional Windows apps like Dropbox, and Windows Store apps like Skype. But it also has customized apps like a version of Instagram, dubbed Instagrille, which can provide its own revenue stream with in-app ads. (We’ve picked five Pokki apps that bring the best of the mobile environment to your desktop.)

SweetLabsPokki’s alternative to Windows 8 places apps in a familiar context. “We started SweetLabs to create the world’s largest app distribution platform for developers, and today’s announcement with the #1 PC maker on the planet, Lenovo, is a massive step in the right direction,” said Darrius Thompson, co-founder and chief executive at SweetLabs, in a statement. “We’re proud that Lenovo has chosen to enhance the out-of-box Windows 8 experience with Pokki, complementing Lenovo’s innovative devices with a better way for users to access and discover apps.”

One could argue, actually, that the addition of Pokki is a plus overall; though it cuts into an incremental source of revenue for Microosft, it boosts the Windows platform as a whole. Simply increasing the number of apps available to the platform, and making them more easily discoverable, should be a goal Microsoft can get behind. At this point, Microsoft should shrug off third-party Start alternatives—which will continue to thrive, even in the wake of Windows 8.1—and simply focus on selling more Windows licenses.

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Review: Krento is a productivity-boosting launcher and Start-menu replacement

For most of us, it's no big deal launching programs and websites, nor opening files and directories. Click a shortcut here, a bookmark there, and you're on your way. For some, however, this feels terribly clunky. Well-known solutions such as Launchy, ObjectDock, and RocketDock try to solve this problem by introducing innovative launchers, but they're not right for everyone. Krento is an alternative made for anyone who's frustrated with plain old Windows, and is looking for a new and easy way to launch everything from one place.

Krento's application circles and Toys sit anywhere you want on your desktop.

Krento is innovative and useful, but its appearance is not very polished. Made by a single developer in his free time, it's more about pure productivity than about looks. Krento is built around elements called Stones (launcher icons), which are part of one or more application circles. The central element is a manager, used to control all circles and stones.

The program comes with one built-in circle, which includes frequently used folders, Wikipedia and Google search, and Internet Explorer. There's also a task-manager circle with all your currently running programs. During the installation process, you can choose to "install additional circles" which will add a power management circle, a social networks circle, a control panel circle, and a desktop circle.

The default circles are only suggestions, of course. Through the manager, or by using Krento's multiple keyboard shortcuts, you can configure your own circles and add your own stones. A stone can be anything from a program, file, folder, or control panel app, to a website, your current date, time, and IP address, or a power-management action such as shut down or log off. You can also use drag and drop to change any existing stone by dragging a program, file, folder, etc. onto it. When creating a new stone, the first thing you do is choose the stone's type. A stone's type fixes it for one purpose only, and this cannot be changed unless you change the type. For example, you cannot drag a folder onto a website stone.

Use the Applications browser to launch any program or file just like a Start menu.

Krento might not be focused on looks, but that's not to say appearance isn't configurable. In fact, Krento comes with dozens of different skins you can apply, each bringing new colors, shapes and transparency into the mix. You can also fine-tune circle size, icon size, stone size, transparency, and anything else you can think of. Through the options, you can set up specific keyboard and mouse actions for activating Krento, control other visual elements, and even backup your personal configuration into a ZIP file.

The third important element you'll notice is the Krento Pulsar. This is a pulsing red circle that sits in the lower right corner of your screen. You can use it to perform several actions such as accessing the options, the Applications browser, and the impressive online documentation.

From here you can also install additional elements called Toys. Krento toys are in fact desktop widgets, and are either useful ones indicating time, date, CPU usage, and available hard disk space, or fun ones such as a swimming goldfish, a shiny Christmas tree, etc. Note that while the website maintains that Krento supports docklets from ObjectDock and RocketDock, this is actually no longer the case.  You can, however, create your own docklets if you like to program, or download a few others on Krento's support forum.

It's very easy to add, remove and configure circles or stones

Krento's aforementioned Applications browser can be used to launch any program or file by using a Start-menu-like live search; start typing a name and results will appear in real time. Krento is meant to replace your desktop icons, bookmarks, and even your Start menu, so it's doubly useful on Windows 8, and will even support touch gestures in the future.

Krento's pretty intuitive to use, but includes many options and features you'll find only by exploring the online documentation, so if you're looking for a program you can install and start using immediately, this is not it. If, however, you're willing to invest an hour or two in reading, playing, and configuring, you'll find that Krento can revolutionize the way you use your PC.

Note: This software comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions. The Download button on the appropriate Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
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Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170 Review: Is 'Entry-Level Desktop Replacement' an Oxymoron?

The Qosmio X775-Q7170 is the entry-level model of the Qosmio X770 series of desktop replacement laptops. The Q7170 sports the same snazzy design as other laptops in the series: a 17.3-inch widescreen, a red-backlit keyboard, and a fade-to-red color scheme. However, it comes packed with some less-impressive hardware components and no 3D display.

Our review model, priced at $1150 (as of March 23, 2012), has an Intel Core i5-2450M processor, 6GB of DDR3 memory, a 640GB hard-disk drive spinning at 7200 rpm, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M graphics card. Since the graphics card doesn't support 3D Vision, Toshiba offers a tray-loading DVD-SuperMulti drive in lieu of a Blu-ray disc player. The X775-Q7170 has built-in Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth 3.0, and it runs 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

The X775-Q7170 earned a score of 82 on our new WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, which means that it was approximately 18 percent slower than our baseline configuration, which has an i5-2500K processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card. This score isn't stellar for a desktop replacement laptop, but it's not bad for the price.

The Qosmio looks like its brothers in the X770 family, which is a good thing if you favor the chunky, plastic, super-polished gaming rig look. The chassis is almost entirely dressed in striated gray plastic, except for the very bottom of the lid (when the computer is open), and the very top of the keyboard deck, where the gray gives way to shiny metallic red. My colleague Jon L. Jacobi likens the Qosmio's casing to a tricked-out street racing car, and that's exactly what it looks like: shiny, fast, and a little tacky.

Toshiba also slaps the Qosmio logo on the lid of the machine in red mirrored plastic, which only serves to make the entire thing look cheaper and more garish.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm not a fan of the Qosmio's overall look. But if you like gaming rigs with lots of shine and pretty lights, this may be the machine for you. The X775-Q7170 has a large keyboard with red backlights.

Turning the keyboard light on doesn't just light up the keyboard; it also lights up a strip across the top of the touchpad and six of the seven touch buttons located above the keyboard. I admit that the red lights look pretty cool when the entire machine lights up.

Aside from the full-size keyboard with ten-key number pad, the Qosmio's keyboard deck contains a large touchpad (with two discrete buttons and an on/off switch), and seven touch buttons (Eco Mode toggle, Wi-Fi toggle, Keyboard Light toggle, Play/Pause, Mute, Volume Down, and Volume Up). On either side of the touch buttons are two Harman/Kardon stereo speakers (Toshiba also supplies a bottom-mounted woofer for extra audio kick).

The keyboard's Chiclet-style keys are smallish, but they provide good feedback and are less stiff than smaller keys tend to be. The touchpad has a slightly rough texture, which seemed to trip up the smoothness and precision of my typing. The touchpad's large buttons are composed of shiny plastic and feel a little flimsy, as though they might break within a year. Since this is a desktop replacement, I suggest using an external mouse.

The Qosmio X775-Q7170 offers a generous selection of ports, considering that a large battery, fan, and optical drive occupy most of the back end. You get four USB ports (three USB 2.0, and one USB 3.0 with Sleep and Charge), VGA- and HDMI-out, gigabit ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks, and a lock slot. You'll find a memory card reader on the front of the machine.

This desktop replacement sports a glossy, 17.3-inch LED-backlit display with a native resolution of 1600 by 900. The screen generally looks good, with bright colors, good contrast, and decent off-axis viewing angles, but it falls short of full HD, and that fact is noticeable on such a large display. You can distinguish individual pixels, which makes content--including images, video, and text--look slightly fuzzy. At the desktop replacement level, this is definitely a bummer.

Video played smoothly on the laptop, despite the fuzziness. Basic HD streaming and DVD playback worked without a hitch, but you may want to consider another machine if you're looking for a strong gaming rig. In our Crysis 2 gaming test, the X775-Q7170 earned a mark of 69 out of 100, and managed frame rates of around 46 frames per second (at high quality, and 1366 by 768 resolution). Audio sounded good, however, thanks to the bottom-mounted woofer and the top-mounted speakers. The headphone jack delivered excellent sound, too.

The Qosmio X775-Q7170 disappoints as a gaming machine/desktop replacement, and it's too big to function well for any other purpose. Thanks to the extra-large battery that protrudes from the bottom of the laptop, the machine does get decent battery life for its category (about 4 hours, 30 minutes in our tests), but that means little when you're lugging around an 8-pound machine. Still, if you're looking for a laptop that you can play games on in a pinch, this model might be worth considering.

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