Great Laptop
Written: Feb 17 '03
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Great Multimedia Capabilities,
Responsive, Good Hardware Specs,
Good Software, Quiet, Low Heat.
Cons: Heavy. No Legacy Ports. Did I mention its kinda heavy?
The Bottom Line: For a desktop replacement in the $2000 range, you probably won't find a better combination of specs, performance, and pros vs. cons anywhere else. Definitely recommend.
|
|
|
| digitalox's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 5205-S703 (PS520U-31P03V) PC Not... |
INTRO
This is my second laptop. After finally deciding against buying a powerbook, I did a lot of research on the available laptops and chose this one. I'm a computer programmer by day but also like to play computer games, edit photos, etc. In short I use computers a lot and demand a lot from them. I bought this looking for a computer to replace my desktop that was powerful, easy to use, reliable, and had good multimedia capabilities.
INCLUDED GEAR
The laptop comes with restore CDs, a Bicycle Card and Board Games CD, Motion DVD Studio CD, Drag and Drop CD Burning Software CD, AC adapter, quick start manual, various safety manuals, and a Toshiba Remote Control. It also has Microsoft Works already installed for you.
The printed instructions are inadequate, but there's a good comprehensive instruction manual on the hard drive. Save the trees.
THE SOFTWARE
Win XP
After load up I immediately upgraded this to XP Pro so I can't say anything about XP Home. I could've waited for the S-704 model but I had a good deal on this one and didn't want to. I'm used to win2k and was hesitant to switch to XP, but it's been pretty painless. XP is pretty intuitive and after changing a few of the annoying XP features back to win2k classic mode, I like it better than the rest of win2k. I like the look and feel, and the tighter integration with multimedia. If you have a copy of Win2k and would rather use it, you download all the drivers for it from the Toshiba website.
Motion DV Studio
Unfortunately I haven't tried any movie editing yet, so I can't comment on this one. Looks pretty good though.
Drag and Drop CD
I really like this. It makes CD writing a breeze and it is tightly integrated with the Toshiba. You literally drag files to little icon on the desktop and it burns them. I've seen other software that tried to make this easy, but always failed in some regard. This one is good.
Bicycle Games
Some card games, mahjongg, battleship, etc. with nice graphics. Pretty fun.
THE GOOD
Multimedia
The screen and the colors are great, better than my desktop monitor. I loaded up Jedi Knight Outcast and bumped all of the game's graphics and sound settings up all the way. There seemed to be little lag during combat, but otherwise it ran great and looked beautiful on the screen.
I also love the sound. The speakers sound great and it even has a little subwoofer. It pumps a great full sound into my headphones when I'm at work too. In addition it has a combo DVD and CD writer, which is nice because I don't need to spread my back ups over 5 CDs anymore. I can back up all my personal files at once onto a DVD now.
Responsive
Adequately fast. Not the fastest, but its good enough for me. Plays all my games well, but lags when doing heavy editing in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I plan on bumping the memory up to a gig at some point though.
Specs
Great specs - P4 2GHz mobile, Integrated Wi-Fi™ (IEEE 802.11b) GeForce4 460Go 64MB DDR, 60GB HDD (4200 rpm) 15" UXGA Active Matrix (1600 x 1200), 512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM, 3-USB (2.0) ports, iLINK (IEEE 1394) port, Infrared port, SD media slot, TV-Out port, 10/100 Ethernet, V.92/56K modem, S/P DIF Optical port, Toshiba Personal Theatre Display for wide angle viewing, Toshiba Style Bay for future flexibility, harman/kardon stereo speakers with sub-woofer.
It is hard to find specs this good in a name brand laptop at this price.
Software
As mentioned above, I liked the software bundle.
Quiet
The fan and hard drive are pretty quiet to me. Audible, but not startling like my old HP laptop.
Low Heat
The under side does get fairly warm, but not to hot for me. I use it lying back on the couch all the time and it doesn't bother me, even when touching bare skin.
Keyboard
The keyboard is responsive to a light touch, but still gives a little click with each keypress. I like it pretty well even though I'm not a big fan of keyboards this small.
Looks
This laptop just looks cool too. It looks very modern and the top is a dark metallic blue color.
THE BAD
Weight
Unless you exercise regularly, you'll find this laptop a bit to heavy to carry for long periods at a time. Being that the extent of my exercise is walking to the car from my apartment, I find it heavy. Taking it back and forth to work is OK, but if I were a serious traveler I wouldn't want to be carrying this around airports all day or anything.
No "Legacy" Ports
Toshiba is going no legacy on this one. That means no PS/2 port, no serial port, no BIOS screen. BIOS is accessible from a windows program Toshiba provides to change bootup options, power options, etc. The BIOS issue probably spells bad news for you if you're thinking about putting linux on anything besides windows on here.
OVERALL
With the few exceptions listed above, I really like this laptop. It has an overall polished feel similar to a luxury car, where you feel like they've taken all the details into consideration.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
digitalox
|
|
Location: Houston, TX
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I enjoy computer programming, the outdoors, and photography.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.