Lugging home the Toshiba Qosmio

This is one heavy beast - not surprising when you consider that Toshiba have packed a personal video recorder, TV tuner and PC into a laptop. We’ve dragged around heavy laptops before, but a few minutes of struggling down city streets will have you begging strangers for steroids. It seemed deceptively light for the first few steps, but our hands were red raw by the time we got it home.

At first glance the Qosmio looks great as the sheer size of the thing is impressive. Drag this out during a meeting and everyone else will slide their Vaios and Powerbooks off the table with an embarrassed smile.

The Qosmio can record live TV like a TiVo or Sky Digibox, but it takes a fight with the manual to get to the point where you can do this. To get the Qosmio running takes at least five times as long as it does to plug in a TiVo. Eventually we got a fairly decent picture and some usable programming information.

It’s hard to see how the Qosmio holds any clear advantage over carrying around a light laptop and a TiVo in a rucksack. Perhaps spending a few more days with this lardy portable will reveal its worth. Expect a full review soon.