The Toshiba Satellite 5205-S505 is Built Solid with Power!
Written: Jul 01 '03 (Updated Jul 14 '03)
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Pros: Plenty of Power and nicely built.
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: Overall I find that the Satellite 5205-S505 has plenty of power and storage for all your computer needs on the go!
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 5205-S505 (PS520U-31P1RV) PC Not... |
Toshiba has built a portable power house computer with the Satellite 5205-S505. The brain behind this notebook is the 2.2 GHz Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor with a 400 MHz Bus Speed plus 512 megabytes of DDR-SDRAM memory that is expandable to 1024 MB. To top it all off they use a Nvidia GeForce 4 graphics controller with 32 MB of 250 MHz DDR video memory that is dedicated and not shared with the 512 MB of memory. Now you have power with plenty of graphics for all your graphic programs and games.
The Satellite 5205-S505 is made for the business person or for personal use and entertainment. The notebook includes a 15-inch SXGA Active Matrix LCD (TFT) display that gives you resolutions of 1400 x 1050, 1280 x 1024, 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600. This display gives you some of the best choices in resolutions today found on most notebooks.
For storage they include a hefty 60 gigabyte hard drive and a DVD/CD-RW drive. The DVD-ROM runs at an 8x speed, the CD at a 24x speed. You can rewrite CD-RW discs at 10x speed and CDRs at 24x speed. This gives you plenty of storage and fast writing CDR and CDRW discs.
Built-in for sound they have a Digital Audio 16-bit sound with a three-way Harman/Kardon speaker system that includes a miniature subwoofer.
This notebook is designed for future upgrades of another 512 MB of RAM, a second optical drive, another hard drive, or a battery pack for longer battery usage. These are important upgrades to look for on any notebook.
Other features include, an internal 56K modem and a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet card, i.Link (IEEE- 1394) S400, USB 2.0 ready and IrDA Wireless Fast Infrared. (IrDA-FIR) Also include are slots for SD and Type II PC cards. Windows XP Home edition is included.
The Satellite 5205-S505 has a full-size 85-key keyboard with 12 function keys and internal and external media buttons with illuminated indicators. It measures 1.8 inches thick, 11.6 inches wide, 12.9 inches deep and weighs 7.1 pounds.
Overall
I found this to be a very powerful and nice notebook. The Touchpad or built-in mouse as I see it was very easy to use, this is one notebook that I believe I could live without adding a mouse to it. All the keys and function button are in good placement making the use of the notebook very nice.
The battery life expectancy is about three hours after a full charge, well it did not let me down, I actually ran it for 3 hours and 4 minute before it gave out on me. If you are going to use it a lot on the go I highly recommend an extra battery or the battery pack for more hours of usage. You can use the notebook with an AC connection that will not run down the battery. How you use it and what you do can make a difference in battery usage, out of my time I viewed a movie on it for about two hours of the time.
Viewing DVD movies are great with clarity and full of rich colors. The sound also surprised me with the three-way Harman/Kardon speaker system. This notebook for me has produced the best movie sound I have used for any notebook but a good set of headphones sound even better.
Games come alive with plenty of speed and no hesitation at all, I played Splitter Cell and the action was very smooth and pleasant. Moving your man around in Splitter Cell was rather easy with just the controls built-in the notebook.
MP3 files were OK through the Harman/Kardon speaker system but the music came alive once I plugged in a good set of headphones.
Word processing, photo editing and digital photo viewing are great when it comes to the Satellite 5205-S505. Photos look alive and real just like that of a professional photographer. I installed Office XP mainly for the use of Word and found Word to run smoothly on this notebook.
This is one nice notebook, I believe Toshiba has built this beauty with pride putting some decent components in it and not the cheapest that other competitors use. Remember you usually get what you pay for, this Toshiba costs more but it has quality built-in.
I highly recommend the Toshiba Satellite 5205-S505!
Need a Good Digital Camera? Then check out my review of the Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom Digital Camera.
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Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1599
Operating System: Windows
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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surferdude7
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Location: Elizabethtown, Ky.
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