It was a struggle to find an i3 laptop in the sub $600 range, which makes this very decent performance for the price. Especially if you couple it with one of those 240GB SSDs
Was originally selling at OfficeWorks for $679
I would guarantee it. Soldering in a traditional HDD would be insane.
This'll be using your everyday standard 7mm hdd, you can use any of the SSD's featured on OZbargain previously. (Sandisk Ultra / Plus / Extreme, Crucial BX / MX series et ctera)
For a regular laptop like this, it's more a question of whether it's simple or a nuisance to do. Going by this video of the S50 B and the S40/50 B manual, seems like this one would be at the nuisance end of the spectrum. If the rear cover is attached with hidden clips as shown in the S50 video, that'd be the least upgrade-friendly aspect (those clips can break easily).
+1
Was just about to post the same video. This seems to be the trend now with most new laptops. I guess we have to get used to it.
I recommend using a guitar pick(s) to get it open, it seems to be the safest at this point.
Will installing ssd void warranty i wonder. Seems they make it difficult to upgrade so maybe they hope you break a clip voiding warranty.
paid 570 for it at officeworks
$488 with cashrewards is decent.
Any opinions on what these on-board graphics cards are like in laptops of this budget? Obviously dedicated graphics are better but would these be reasonable to do some occasional photoshop and the odd game of The Sims 2/3 a few times a year? I'm definitely not after a gaming machine as I enjoy them much more on consoles.
My old 2009 laptop has a 512mb Nvidia and is still going strong for internet and Word but anything more is getting a bit much.
Scroll through these benchmarks, should give you a good idea.
Photoshop is probably CPU intensive rather than GPU, I haven't used any of the more recent iterations that can probably utilise OpenGL to squeeze more power out of the GPU. I don't believe it will be too slow though with this i5 under the hood, especially considering the best CPU you could get in 2009 would be atleast 40% slower than this one (even if they have the same GHz!)
Intel graphics 4400 should work fine with photoshop and most games on medium-to-very-low settings/resolution (except for a few games that are very intensive and/or not optimised well).
It has a backlight keyboard which is good.
Is it possible to take out the Intel® HD Graphics 4400 and upgrade it with a Nvidia? computer newbie, last computer bought 7yrs ago
not with any laptops
Not possible. As mentioned because this is a laptop, but there might be some external graphics solutions available… Might just be more expensive than this laptop.
looks like this laptop doesn't support Windows 10 as no Windows 10 drivers on Toshiba website..
You don't really need Windows 10 specific drivers because 10 is quite backward compatible with 8/8.1…
Is it free to upgrade to Windows 10? (Sorry if this is a dumb question.)
Any device running 7/8/8.1 can, so yes.
upgraded this machine to win10, installed a 500gb SSD and upgraded to 8 gig Ram! very close to an ultra book, except for the screen!
Since you mention the SSDs, does that mean you know that the HDD of this model can be upgraded?