Want Bang For Your Buck? Fire In The Hole!
Written: Jan 09 '02 (Updated Jan 29 '03)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Lots of features, a good screen, and real ports. Cheap, too.
Cons: Comes with Windows XP, no real manuals, bring your own software.
The Bottom Line: It slices, it dices! Runs games, movies, CDs, and outputs to your TV. A good machine at a great price.
|
|
|
| zero_'s Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204 (PS183U-00KP0X) PC Not... |
So you're looking to buy a laptop, are you? That's easy enough. Wait, you want an all in one? With a DVD drive? TV out? Good audio hardware? Oh, that's too bad. That'll cost you.
Well, maybe not.
The trouble with laptops is that they cost a bloody mint. The trouble with laptops that don't is that there's always something wrong with them. Thus, when I first laid eyes on the Toshiba 1805-S204 at a computer show (and noted its price) I was a little skeptical. Toshiba doesn't disappoint with this one, though, and I quite like it.
First up, the obligatory numbers: The 1805-S204 comes with a 1 gigahertz Intel Celeron processor (more of which in a minute), 256 megabytes of RAM, and a 20 gigabyte hard drive (In marketing gigabytes- Advertisements list a 'gigabyte' as 1,000,000,000 bytes, but it is acutally 1,024,000,000. Thus the S204 actually has a 18.6 gigabyte hard drive.). It also packs a 13.3 inch active matrix display (also more of which later), an 8x DVD-ROM drive, floppy, TV out, a network adapter, modem, and all the regular suspects, portwise.
There's lots of little details that make this a nice machine, as well. For example, there's an analog volume knob along the side of the computer. Bear in mind that this is a real analog volume knob, not some half-assed software gizmo that looks like a knob, like the Compaq desktops have. This machine also has the full host of ports (serial, parallel, PS2, video, as well as USB), unlike those unusually popular Sony machines. There's an IR port as well, which is for some reason becoming a rare commodity these days. There are some shortcut buttons above the keyboard, which are standard fare these days, and a set of CD player controls at the bottom edge of the machine. Next to those is a switch that activates a most unusual feature- If you turn the laptop off, you can use it as a CD player. In this mode the buttons on the bottom edge of the machine behave just like they would on a portable CD player. The speakers are mounted along the bottom edge of the computer, as well, and for a laptop actually don't sound too bad.
Performancewise this is actually a very good machine. Despite all the wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth you're likely to hear about the Celeron processor in the thing it really doesn't make a whole world of difference. For most tasks one gigahertz is one gigahertz, and if you're not animating the next Toy Story on the thing, who cares? A 1 gigahertz Celeron is more than enough for just about every PC game and desktop task you care to name, or will bother doing on a laptop.
The other thing you'll get a line fed to you over is screen size. Personally, I think thirteen and a half inches at 1024x768 resolution is enough. Sure, Toshiba's next model up the food chain has a 14.1 inch display, but it still has the same maximum resolution, meaning your picture won't be any better but it will suck up more power because it's larger. Once you see how big a 13.3 inch screen really is you'll like it. Trust me. There's a TV out jack on the back of the machine, too, but you'll need to find a composite video cable to use it. You can set the machine to send the display output to a TV, external monitor, or keep it on the LCD panel with no software and a minimum of fuss.
What this machine lacks, I noticed, are several classic Toshiba features. It lacks the side mounted power button, the charateristic eraserhead mouse, and the keyboard looks and feels different than previous Toshiba machines. This seems to be the direction Toshiba is heading nowadays. If you don't like the ergonomics, well... tough.
On the software end this machine isn't so hot. It comes with Windows XP (which I hate with a vengence), Lotus SmartSuite, Nortion Antivirus 2002, Quicken, and WinDVD. That's about the size of it, really. It also comes with the usual AOL/MSN bull, which I suggest you make the first thing you delete from this machine. With a rollout like this you'll have to provide your own software, which really isn't too hard. Come on now, how many of you really bought Office 2000 instead of stealing it from work? I thought so.
WinDVD runs well on this machine (and comes on the recovery CD so you can share it with all your friends- just don't tell anyone I said that), and will play back movies at full screen with no slowdown and no skip. With the TV out port on this thing you really could use it as a standalone DVD player, albeit an expensive one. The CD player controls also work with some multimedia applications, by the way, including WinDVD. This means you can get the DVD spinning, fold up the machine, and stow it someplace easily.
There is one thing you'll notice straight away when you close the S204: It's big, and it's square. Most laptops have a rectangular shape, vaugely determined by the 4x3 aspect ratio of the display. This one, on the other hand, is nearly square when you close it. It's only a little less than an inch wider than it is deep. Because of this the CD player controls and speakers stick out past where the base and lid of the computer meet. I suppose this is so you can get at all the controls to use it as a CD player without opening the thing up. If you simply must have the slimmest and smallest computer you can find this will be a problem for you, but if that's the case you have more money than brains and should go get a Sony Vaio. The thing still fits in my ratty old laptop bag, so it's small enough for me.
The first thing to go on this machine was Windows XP. I scrubbed it clean and installed Windows 98SE on it (which can be done, by the way, but you'll need to hunt down some drivers). There is no Windows XP installation included, just a "recovery disk" that will let you reinstall drivers on a one-by-one basis or scrub your machine and restore it to factory default in case you really bugger something up. The S204 doesn't come with much in the way of a manual, either, which is unfortunately becoming a common practice these days. You get a quickstart guide, a registration card, and that's about it. There's an on-disk software manual, but to me that's just not the same thing.
All in all, this is an excellent machine for the geek on the road, especially those on tight budgets. I'd pick one up while you can still get them, if I were you. With Windows 98 on it, I couldn't be happier with mine. Recommended.
[b]Big Fat Hairy Update:[/b] After many, many weeks of testing, downloading, fiddling, and tweaking I have assembled a perfect optimized Windows 98SE driver set for this machine. Yes, folks that Windows 98SE running on your 1805 with full OpenGL support (at full speed, no less), sound, DVD, modem, network, mouse, and Toshiba utilities. If you want the driver set just email me and we'll talk.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1039
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 13
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
zero_
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Robert "Zero" Drendall
Location: Claymont, DE, United States
Reviews written: 101
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
Providing your semi-regular dose of extreme verbosity since somewhere around the turn of the century.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.