Just got the latest Ultrabook offering from Toshiba, the Portégé Z835. It’s the light weight, very slim, full functioning, and affordable Notebook PC. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I need it mainly for portability because I need to have a PC ready while traveling. The specs are quite impressive for it’s size. It boots in 30 seconds. I got the machine up and running in no time. The new battery lasts about 7 hours in “Eco Mode”.
[Update: Toshiba has released a BIOS update to control the fan. The fan still makes an annoying sound, but it only turns on once in a while.]
So far my biggest gripe is the fan noise. It’s the only moving part in the box that I’m unable to turn it off since the laptop runs cool most of the time. I have other minor ones like the sticky feel of the keyboard and the lack of choice in chassis color.
All in all, it’s a solid performer. I’ve owned many laptops before1, and I can say, with all honesty, I’m impressed with the Z835.
- Since 1993 [↩]
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Does all the hardware work under Ubuntu 11.10? I was looking at the Asus ux31, but the trackpad was an issue – as was the price.
Hey Jay,
I’m sure the new Ultrabooks will work with the latest Ubuntu. If not, just submit a bug report and they will most likely fix it.
Thanks Rudy,
I got one. Everything works well under Ubuntu 11.10. I moved the recovery partition to a thumb drive because the machine shipped with four primary partitions on the SSD. I also had to upgrade my DD-WRT access points to v.17798 because the laptop would kill them instantly (similar to http://goo.gl/7dPkR). All fixed now.
And 6 seconds from GRUB menu selection to login screen!
Wow, 6 seconds boot! I just love SSD. 🙂
I didn’t know the Portege can kill a dd-WRT based router. I have one in a Linksys WRT56GL and nothing killed it, yet. Interesting info though, thanks for that!