If you....
Written: Jun 24 '03 (Updated Jun 26 '03)
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Pros: nice screen, quite, fast
Cons: can get hot, huge and heavy
The Bottom Line: I would recommend buying it before any of the s7xx models. The $600 more is just not worth it.
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| skonrad's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 5205-S505 (PS520U-31P1RV) PC Not... |
...look for a laptop you can take on the plane with you every week, forget this one. This machine is a mobile desktop replacement.
The screen is pretty nice and the speakers are awesome, too. It runs pretty quite and I haven't found a flaw yet. The only thing I really don't like is all the Toshiba utilities you need to install. The first time you boot up the laptop thousand of programs pop up and ask you if you want AOL for 3 months for free. I hate this.
The first thing I did was installing WinXP professional on this. Norton Antivirus is unfortunately gone now... but, oh well.
In general, it's a really nice machine. People wanting to run Linux on it should be aware of the troubles they might run into. This thing has a million components built-in where I think you can only get Windows drivers. You cannot even adjust the screen bightness with a tool started in Windows. Furthermore, BIOS is acessed from within Windows. Also, BIOS upodate are done within Windows (has no Floppy drive anyways).
Overall, if you run Windows and don't wanna haul this machine around all day, you will like it. It runs about 3 hours on the standard battery, which is pretty good for such a huge machine. 3D games run flawless and the keyboard is nice, too. I think the touchpad could be a bit better, but I rarely use it anyways. The hard drive is huge and pretty fast though, I like that.
One thing that really bugs me is that it takes forver to charge the battery when the computer is turned on.
I paid $1700 - $100 rebate for this machine with 3 years of warranty. I think it was a pretty good deal.
First Update:
The cd rewriter works like a champ (at least with nero)
The screen is nice, but I had a hard time adjusting the colors, it seems almost too bright... but I think I got it now. Maybe I am just used to the other Dell FP we have.
My external wireless card gives me some badly scratching speakers when data is transferred, so I guess I will have to invest into the internal one as soon as my bank account recovers from the purchase.
I think I am happy now that I did not get the 705... the DVD burner seems to be really picky when it comes to blank DVDs. So I'd rather wait and get an external one (USB 2.0 or Firewire) or I will get one for the style bay if they have a decent one (definitely the most expensive option)
I just found out you can use the remote for power point presentations as well, which is really sweet.
Btw, install Intel Application Accelerator 2.2.2 (2.3 does not support mobile chipsets anymore!) which should speed up the machine considerably.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1700
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
skonrad
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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