A laptop of its own class.
Written: Aug 13 '02 (Updated Aug 14 '02)
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Pros: I have used it for one year and i know it is good.
Cons: I also know the bad points.
The Bottom Line: Read above once more and you will know my meaning.
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| blasterpc's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 1800-S203 (PS181U-00CFC2E1) PC N... |
Those of you who have not tried a laptop yet and had the notion laptops are not durable please note, this laptop falls in the same line old Toshiba laptops had long before, durable, cheap reliable. The fact Toshiba is still producing it months ago shows that they did not want to give up on their once successful technology yet. I say this because I had three old Toshiba laptops and the build is about the same as this one, the screen, the keyboard, the sound system. So I had this feeling that this particular laptop may be a recycled product. When I say recycled, I mean old and reliable parts, not lousy and obsolete ones. Below is my own experience of using it.
Needs
This laptop fulfils all my needs for word processing an internet surfing. I know and understand there are conflicts when saying this as any processor from Pentium two onwards can handle these tasks quite sufficiently. My argument is that, you will know the big difference when you are processing extremely huge documents or loading WebPages. After all, if you want a gaming machine as well as a cheap one, easy, what you are sacrificing will be the durability and reliability of the laptop which I had seen a lot, even nowadays, how sad.
Gaming
I did not really want to comment on the graphics card as it is really underpowered for 3D gaming. After some research, I found out that this graphics card is actually based on trident's technology which is quite advanced 3 years back but only sufficient for today's light use. This is really a trade-off. But ask your conscience, do you really need to use 3D application for office use. Moreover, are you willing to sacrifice your laptop's life for some CPU intensive, ram intensive and graphics intensive games. If you are, I suggest you forked out about twice about the money of the gaming desktop to purchase a laptop to ensure you don't get one of those low cost(cutting cost in quality assurance), high performing(low reliability) laptops. Don't think I am just giving prejudiced views but I had seen it with my own eyes (overheating, bad power supply, cracked plastic, burned graphics card etc).
Under the hood
I had opened up the case due to curiosity and I found that it had a striking resemblance to my old Satellite 1605 laptop which is still working as new now. This shows that the technology is still the good old ones but in an improvised way. This laptop is quite moderate in thickness but as I have said, based on old technology, this is the best size Toshiba can squeeze out. Under the plastic, there are metal structures which I think Toshiba had included in the fear of one sitting on the laptop (seriously). Without all these weights around, this 3.2 kg could have just weighted for about 2.9kg. I am willing to give up weight for durability. Most components are powered by ALi (Acer Lab Incorporation), a company producing it own motherboard and chipsets. Modem is pci socketed, so replacing it is just a breeze. Cooling system is quite efficient. This is because of the huge heat sink on top of the processor and majority of the time it is turning, unlike most modern one which stubbornly activate unless the processor is going to burn. This in turn rip-off battery life by 15 minutes which I wouldn’t bother if my processor is cooled. Screen is bright and clear as usual and to improve durability, instead of using two screws to secure the LCD panel, Toshiba uses 10 screws (screws are cheap nowadays????). I know this is crazy but I pay attention to those little things though.
Keyboard
If you ever had those satellite 160 cds laptops, Toshiba is recycling those keyboards onto this laptop. I have not had a single stucked keys and I believed the rubberized soft injection spring pad Toshiba is using underneath the keys will not soften or harden in years to come.
Ports
I have used all these ports and there is not a single problem. No irq conflicts, everything just works. One more thing to take note is the PCMCIA slots; my pc card never gets too hot when plugged in. This may be due to good ventilation. My model had all the ports I need, 2 pc card slots, 2 USB port, one parallel port, one vga port, one serial port, ps2, modem socket, Ethernet and a video out analog port.
Battery life
The battery for this Toshiba laptop is weak. But after seeing all my friends' extremely long life batteries die, I think I would rather had a long life-span short life battery than a short life-span, long life battery. The average battery life is 2.5 hrs under CPU intensive usage and 3.2 hrs under light use.
Software
The Toshiba utilities are of no use for me at all. But at least, span works 2000 is included and may be useful for those file sharing multiple users (All of them must have span works). Windows ME is good only if I use msconfig to disable all startup programs (including those windows services). You can always setup your own windows environment. All drivers are posted on Toshiba website and there is an online forum for help.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: 801-900
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
blasterpc
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Member: Ang Weiyang
Location: Singapore
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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