Toshiba Tecra A8 blogger outreach programme

Posted Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 12:15am in Off topic, Technology  | 

UPDATE: Toshiba have a blog. Multilingual too. You can find it here.

Full disclaimer: The nice people at Toshiba emailed me to ask if I would like to receive one of their notebooks for trial purposes. Toshiba made it clear from the beginning that I will have to return it within a week of receiving it. I am not being paid nor have I received any other incentives to write this blog post. Toshiba has covered the courier costs however.

As the above says, Toshiba contacted me to ask if I wanted to receive one of their Tecra A8 notebooks. Their request to me, if I wanted, was to write an honest and objective view. So here goes.

The Good

Size
The first thing that struck me about the A8 was its size. The screen seems HUGE… In a good way. Anyone looking for a desktop replacement may find the A8 appealing. I use a small and very portable Sony Vaio which, in comparison, looks tiny. After using the A8 for a couple of hours I decided it was best to switch back to my own laptop in case I got too used to the large screen.

Weight
Even though it’s a large notebook, the weight of it is relatively light. I gave it my own scientific weight testing (i.e. putting it in my laptop back and carrying it on my shoulder for a short period of time) and, even though I could tell there was a difference, was still very impressed considering its size.

Power
I’m not the most technically-able person in the world so super duper powerful processes don’t float my boat or get me excited. But with the 1GB of RAM, Intel’s Duo processor and 100GB of hard drive I could tell the difference. Again, with my scientific and calculated testing methodology I downloaded Second Life. Why? Because the last three computers I’ve had performed terrible with Second Life even though the specs were good enough according to Second Life’s website.

Using Second Life was a breeze. Literally. No delay or stalling. No crashes. Nothing. You could hear the cooling fans increase as I flew around Edelman Island but that was it. Perfect.

The Bad

Design
Okay, I’m a bit of a right brain thinker. I like and admire good design. It appeals to my soul. The A8, however, doesn’t. Simply because its style is nothing new or unique. It looks like any other laptop. But, then again, I don’t think the intention of the A8 is to help you with your mojo or to be the Aston Martin of notebooks - its purpose seems to be more of a robust, reliable workhorse. In the kindest sense.

Windows XP and a few applications
Not a problem with the laptop specifically. Just would have been good to have come with Vista and a few funky software applications preinstalled. I’m bored with Windows XP and, even though I wouldn’t switch to Vista just yet, it would have had me playing about with it and putting it through its paces more.

The Blogger Outreach Programme

Personally, I think this is a great initiative by Toshiba and was pleased to be asked to be involved. The guys over there seem to know their way around the whole social-media-sphere. Really friendly and personal approach. Good stuff.

If I can criticise in a constructive manner on a couple of points:

* Community. I very much doubt I’m the only person receiving a notebook but, then again, I don’t know. It would have been good if Toshiba created some kind of community around the people who have received one. For example, creating a forum where bloggers could go to discuss it. The good, the bad etc. It would have also allowed me to link to the other bloggers involved and vice versa.

* Details. If I received a little background information with the notebook (i.e. a brochure) I probably could have made this blog post more detailed. Even just giving information on the specifications would have helped.

* Tecra M7 looks cool. Would have much preferred to have taken that for a spin.

All in all I think this is a good move by Toshiba and would love to fire a few questions at the people involved after the programme has finished. Would be great to get their experiences on what they learnt from doing it.

technorati tags: toshiba, tecra, blogger+outreach, blogger+relations

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