We love our jobs, and machines like Toshiba's new Qosmio G15-AV501 are the reason why. Rather than being a standard laptop that you can use for typical productivity tasks and maybe a little gaming, the Qosmio goes to the next level, becoming flat-out the best multimedia laptop we've ever seen.

Not only does this sleek, silver laptop feature an integrated TV tuner, but it eschews the typical Windows XP Home or Professional operating system in favor of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Media Center offers a much cleaner, more organized interface for accessing multimedia functions, like watching TV, playing DVDs, listening to music, or thumbing through yourdigital photos.

After connecting your TV’s coaxial output to the Qosmio, you can watch television programming just like you would on your TV set through the My TV menu. (You can also use composite video-in, but more on that later.) Then just press the Pause, Rewind, and Fast Forward buttons on the remote touse the system’s TiVo-like functionality.

The My Pictures menu provides an uncluttered, intuitive interface for organizing and viewing your digital photos. To watch DVD movies, just select the Play DVD option and you’re set. To access any home movies stored on the Qosmio, choose the My Videos option. You can also listen to any digitalaudio tracks stored on the G15-AV501 through the My Music menu.

With not one, but two fast 5,400-rpm hard drives installed in the Qosmio offering a combined 100GB of capacity, you can store a gigantic number of videos, TV shows, photos, and songs before you hit the system’sstorage limit.

You can also use the system’s DVD SuperMulti Drive to store your files. With the ability to write at some of the fastest speeds you’ll see on any laptop to practically every CD and DVD format, this drive has you covered. A flash memory reader that accommodates Memory Sticks, MMC, SD, and xD cards gives you a convenient way to transfer photos from your digital camera. For connecting anything else, there’s a FireWire and four USB 2.0 ports. Even networking is a snap, thanks to an 802.11b/g adapter and a Bluetooth radio.

Toshiba has gone well beyond the convenient design of the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 interface. When you want to kick back and watch a little TV, the Qosmio doesn’t even make you boot up the operating system. Instead, just use one of the system’s two included remote controls to activate the system’s QosmioPlayer, which allows you to enjoy TV, DVDs, or CDs while the laptop’s PC functionality is turned off.

Realizing the system’s incredible multimedia features would be wasted on a small, dim display, Toshiba has outfitted the G15-AV501 with an outstanding a 17-inch screen that sports a crisp widescreen resolution of1440 x 900 pixels.

What really sets this display apart from those found in other laptops, though, are the two lamps installed behind it. The technology behind this is called Ultimate TruBrite, and it yields the brightest screen we’ve ever seen on a laptop. Beyond the bright images it produces, the graphics on this display are also perfectly visible at even extreme angles—perfectfor when a few friends stop by to watch some TV on your Qosmio.

We were also surprised by the sound the Qosmio generates. Thanks to a relatively large pair of Harman Kardon speakers, along with SRS WOW and TruSurround XT technology, the integrated speakers are much louder and fullersounding than the typical laptop speakers.

You don’t have to settle for the system’s integrated speakers and display when you want to watch TV or a DVD movie, however. Thanks to S-Video and component video and audio outputs, along with an extra long cable on the included IR transceiver for the remote controls, you can easily connect the Qosmio to your big-screen TV and stereo system to make the most of its entertainment capabilities. An IR blaster included with the remotes’ transceiver controls devices like digital cable and satellite TV set-top boxes.

Despite all its multimedia features, the Qosmio doesn’t skimp on any of its PC-related components. The system is built around a fast 1.8-GHz Pentium M processor with 512MB of DDR memory—good enough to nearly crack the 200 mark in MobileMark 2002. In our real-world experience, the system performed flawlessly, whether it was crunching spreadsheets in Excel or editing images in Photoshop. Multitasking also proved no problem for this laptop. We didn’t have any issues with the input devices at all, either. The keyboard is quite sturdy, and the touchpad is very responsive.

When it comes to gaming, the system’s performance was even better. We played a little Painkiller on the G15-AV501 and the installed 128MB Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5700 graphics processor didn’t struggle one bit. Every scene was rendered with exacting detail and the motion between frames was incredibly smooth. 3DMark2001 backed up our experience, reporting one of the highest scores we’ve ever seen on a laptop: 12327.

Although this system is a bit pricey, at $2,999, it has so many terrific multimedia and PC features that it’s well worth the price. Our only criticisms of the system itself are its large, weighty frame and a short 1 hour and 37 minutes of battery runtime, although that weight means that you probably won’t be using this system unplugged, anyway. In short, the Toshiba Qosmio G15-AV501 is the perfect mobile entertainment system.

PROS	CONS
• Instant-on TV tuner and DVD player • Brightest screen ever • Fast multiformat DVD burner • Wealth of external interfaces • 100GB hard drive	• Large and heavy • Short battery life

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