Toshiba's latest speed demon under 2 grand
Written: Sep 09 '01 (Updated Sep 09 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: 15" TFT active matrix screen
Cons: relatively expensive at $1900 at Circuit City
The Bottom Line: For around two thousand dollars, this is the best machine I have seen this summer.
|
|
|
| jefhatfield's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 2805 |
For the past two years I have been in high tech fixing PCs, tutoring newbies, and selling PCs. In that short period of time, I saw laptops go from sub-$2,000.00 dollar 300+ Mhz AMD K62 machines to sub-$2,000.00 dollar Pentium 3 and Athlon 4 laptops.
Talking with other fellow technicians, two names always popped up in the world of laptops, Sony and Toshiba. Like I have mentioned in past reviews, I always was told by salesmen and techies that Toshiba had the best quality control and thus had the best machines.
A light, sleek 15" inch laptop:
Even though I prefer the touchpad of Compaqs and Sonys to the pointing stick Toshibas, I was seriously tempted the other day when I saw a 1 GHz Pentium 3 laptop with a 15" TFT active matrix screen for $1899.99 at Circuit City at the local shopping mall.
The first thing I did was see if the unit was heavy since some of the heavier 14" and 15" inch laptops usually go on sale first. To my surprise, this large but thin laptop was considerably lighter than my 1999 era Compaq Presario laptop with its tiny 12" inch screen.
With its contrasting silver, grey, and black styling in a thin form factor, this computer is also very sexy to look at which is always a plus. I always seem to impress people with my sleek iBook because of its great design. Toshiba has always been hit or miss in their design but the 2805 is a real beauty to look at.
Now down to what's under the hood:
Running Windows ME, the stock 128 MB of RAM should be enough for most users in the business or at home. The GeForce graphics are great and suitable for games. And the 1 GHz Pentium 3 is fast.
I usually try to open up programs and see how fast I can open and shut them down. I also shut down the computer and note the time it takes. And most of the time, I use my stopwatch to see how long the system takes to boot up. My laptop with a 366 MHz AMD K62 takes 3.5 minutes to boot up with its 160 MB of RAM running Windows 98. When I booted up the slightly more sophisticated Windows ME on a 800 MHz Celeron Compaq Presario laptop with 128 MB of RAM, it took a respectable 57 seconds. But when I booted up the 1 GHz Toshiba 2805 running Windows ME on 128 MB of RAM, this laptop was ready to go in less than 45 seconds! I was impressed since this was the fastest time I had stopwatched in the bootup sequence on a laptop.
Now I don't believe this amazing machine usually goes for $1899.99 but it was an "open box buy" at Circuit City and still carried the one year warranty on it as if it were a full priced item.
As I parted with this sexy speedster, I glanced at the large screen and I noticed the wide viewing angle. This is a plus when using the laptop with others looking on. My archaic passive matrix HPA screen on my now old early-1999 laptop only has a viewing angle suitable for the user only. Thank God I have never seen any passive matrix screens in the last few months.
When I have to replace my old 366 laptop (which only benchmarks as fast as a mobile Pentium 1 233 MMX in ZDnet speed tests), Toshiba's 2805 will be on my short list of candidates.
Five stars!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1900
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15
Internal Storage: DVD
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
jefhatfield
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: California, USA
Reviews written: 149
Trusted by: 42 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.