Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Toshiba Laptop Battery
The sudden disappearance of Apple's 17-inch MacBook Pro laptop after yesterday's WWDC keynote provoked split opinions on CNET. Photographers and videographers will weep, some said. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display has more pixels and will be a great replacement, said others.
Whichever way you slice it, potential suitors of the 17-inch Pro suddenly find themselves looking for a new partner. Alas, here's what you'll soon discover: most 17-inch laptops on the Windows side are "gaming laptops," built clunky, bulky, and leaning toward power over battery such as Toshiba PA3250U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3356U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3291U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3506U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3591U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba Portege 4000 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A10 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A100 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A70 Battery , Toshiba Satellite A75 Battery , Toshiba Tecra 8000 Battery , Toshiba Tecra 8100 Battery life.
(Note: yes, commenters, I agree. Of all Windows laptops, the HP Envy 17 would probably be the closest match. HP still sells the 17-inch version, and it costs as little as $1,249 on HP's such as website. However, we haven't reviewed the current 17-incher: for the closest equivalent, see our review of the HP Envy 15.)
Here are the closest equivalents we've reviewed at CNET, but you'll rapidly realize that none of them perfectly match what the Pro offered.
Toshiba's Excite line of tablets sport some of the thinnest and lightest aluminum-clad designs available today. The Excite 7.7 ($499.99/16GB, $579.99/32GB direct) is the smallest in a family with 10- and 13-.3 inch models, and its design and features rival the high-end Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 ($699.99, 3.5 stars). The Excite 7.7's Best Deal: at incredible AMOLED screen, fast quad-core Tegra 3 processor, and slim aluminum frame make it a tablet to talk about, but it's a tough sell in a 7-inch market where most tablets cost between $200 and $350.
Compared with Toshiba's older Thrive 7 ($379.99, 3 stars), the Excite 7.7 is a work of art. The slate measures 8.1 by 5.3 by 0.31 inches (HWD) and weighs 12.3 ounces, putting it on par with the svelte Galaxy Tab 7.7, which measures 7.74 by 5.24 by 0.31 inches and weighs 12 ounces. The frame uses a combination of plastic for the outer rim and textured aluminum for the back plate. The result is a clean, modern look, with a sturdy feel for such a slim tablet. Along the top edge are the Power and Volume buttons, as well as an orientation lock switch. A 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB port, and microSD card slot line the right side, while two speaker grilles flank the oversized proprietary dock connector along the bottom. Curiously, the oversized dock connector, which terminates in a USB plug, does not work for syncing to a computer—it only powers the tablet, while the microUSB port allows for data transfer between computers and external storage devices, but does not power the device.
Unlike the Galaxy Tab 7.7, the Excite connects to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi only, accessing 802.11b/g/n networks on the 2.4GHz band. There is a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera and rear-facing 5-megapixel camera, but like mant tablet cameras, both are unsuitable for anything but casual snapshots. Pictures, even in good light, appeared washed out, with soft details in my tests. Video was even worse, especially indoors, with frame rates dropping as low as 9 frames per second and heavy image noise.
The real draw here is the incredibly vibrant AMOLED display—the same one used on the Galaxy Tab 7.7, but without Samsung's trademarked "Super" designation. The 7.7-inch, 1280-by-800-pixel display appears more saturated than on the New Apple iPad ($499, 4.5 stars), though Apple's tablet gets a bit brighter. The viewing angle is superb, but given the somewhat low maximum brightness and highly reflective screen, the Excite 7.7 is not a good outdoor performer. The 196 pixels per inch isn't quite "Retina" level, but it is still very sharp and the color richness can't be beat. The only problem I experienced was an overly sensitive auto-brightness setting, which became distracting as the screen brightness fluctuated too noticeably. If you manually set your brightness, this is not an issue.