Toshiba 2805-603 Bang for the buck
Written: Nov 11 '01
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Pros: Fast and Reliable(not w/Win ME) good game box, Good sound.
Cons: Mouse buttons to close to space bar, Short battery life, Win ME.
The Bottom Line: After reinstalling the OS to Windows 2000 SP2 it performs flawlessy. Not one issue after 3 Months of contant use. Everything just works. RedHat 7 works well also.
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| egfrow's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 2805-S603 (PS287U-000TJHD) PC No... |
Let me start out by saying that I have shopped around very carefully for a laptop that would deliver the best bang for the buck. Dell delivered the best power and features but was allot more money. I opted for the Toshiba S2805-603 because It had everything I wanted in a Mobile Workstaion. I say Mobile Work Station instead of a laptop because I wanted to be able to do the same things on my Laptop that I can do on my regular PC. I really was not very concerned with battery life and ultra small sizes in a laptop. If that's what you want then please don't read on.
The only other vendors that had the spec this baby had were the Dell Inspiron series and the IBM T20(barley). Both were overly priced at the time I purchased the Toshiba. Around August 2001. The Dell was nearly $700 dollars more. ouch.
This is what I wanted. Games (lots), Burning CDs, Watching DVD Movies, Large Display, Multi-Monitor views, Lots of RAM, Big Hard Drive, Good Sound, Video TV out. USB and Firewire, Fast Ethernet and Anolog Modem, Cheap and finally Cheap and Reliable. Sheww!!
Toshiba 2805-603 comes stock with all this and more. Gefore 2 go video(16MB), built in CD-RW/DVD 8X drive, 15" Active display. 256MB RAM, 1Gig PIII-M CPU, 30GB Ultra 66 HD, Built in Sound and Subwoofer (sounds good), TV output with cables, 2 USB ports, One Firewire port, 10/100 LAN and 56K Modem built in.
I seem to gotten I wanted except for a few details which I will go over. I paid $2080 for my Toshiba at ecost.com..
It arrived pre-installed with Windows ME.(yuck!) After 20 minutes of running it with ME it crashed. I new it had to be the Windows ME OS instead of the laptop, It was new! I was going to install Windows 2000 anyways. I never did like Windows ME. Well I installed Winodws 2000 with Service Pack 2 and Direct X 8.0. it now runs perfectly. I've had Win2K installed for over 3 months and have yet to have one system crash.
Most games I have tried work perfectly with Windows 2K. Some games may require the latest patch from the game maker. I have played Quake3, Black & White, Rogue Spear, Half-Life, Diablo3, and the New Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Demo. All the games worked perfectly. DVD's look and sound great. The burner works good but has a few Issues with some copy proected games when you try to back them up.
I store most of my MP3 Collection and burn of a copy of my favorites on a moments notice. I can dump my Sony DV camcorder straight to the PC for editing via Firewire. I use Adobe Premiere and it performs well on this baby.
There are a few small issues I have with this Toshiba. The mouse buttons are to close to the space bar. It's a little heavy but I don't mind. The battery life is very short 2.5 hours max. This does not seem to be a serious problem for now.
I love this machine.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2080
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
egfrow
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Reviews written: 1
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