Excellent development, gaming, and casual use laptop
Written: Jun 03 '03
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Pros: A lot of nice features at an affordable price.
Cons: A little light on a few of the expected standard features.
The Bottom Line: Excellent laptop for the price. It's extremely lightweight, compared to others in its class. It'll perform almost any task you throw at it.
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| yuenp's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite 1130-S155 (PS113U-05X9Y7) PC Not... |
Pros:
A lot of nice features at an affordable price:
15" Screen
3 USB 2.0 ports
Optional internal WIFI
Supports Dual Monitor shared desktop
512 megs of RAM
40 gig HDD
CDRW/DVD Combo Drive
Light weight
S-video out
Good technical support
Cons:
A little light on a few of the expected standard features:
no floppy drive
no ps/2
no serial port
no Infra-red
no internal mic
When comparing many of the options that were available in purchasing this laptop, the Toshiba stood out among its competitors for the features that it toted vs. the price. Sony, Compaq/HP, Gateway, Dell, and even E-machines were all either quite a bit more expensive for the same specs, or comparably priced with considerably lower specs.
The Toshiba S155 runs very well and can multitask fairly well to a point with its Celeron processor. It's not a computer for the power-user, but if you need something to do a few light tasks it's more than adequate.
I am a web developer. The laptop will handle using Photoshop, Flash, and ColdFusion Studio simultaneously pretty well, I haven't found multitasking to be a problem, unless I need to render something large out in Flash or Photoshop and try to do something else at the same time. I've not attempted editing video on it yet, but am confident that it could handle it. The Dual Monitor support is very handy for web and video development.
The DVD/CDRW combo drive is handy and with the XP and 3rd party software that comes installed, burning CD's is incredibly easy.
One downside I found was the lack of standard ports. This is especially frustrating if you use an older Palm or handheld PDA device that uses any other method than USB to synchronize. I use a Kyocera Smartphone. It's a PDA/digital mobile phone. It's an older model and uses a serial cable to sync. My first impulse when I saw that it didn't have a serial port was, "oh, that's ok, I'll sync using the IR port." ...but it doesn't have one of those, either. I bought a USB to Serial converter from Palm, but I haven't tried using it yet... we'll see.
For the most part, I use the laptop for presentations to clients, surfing the web on WIFI (PCMCIA card, not internal), network gaming, and watching DVD movies... it's intended for casual use, and it is excellent for that kind of use. Also, with Xboxconnect installed, I can connect to the internet using the WIFI card and connect the xbox through the 10/100 port and play Xbox online. Bonus!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 999
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
yuenp
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Location: Toledo, OH, USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Web Developer.
Enjoys video games.
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