Toshiba Satellite A75-S229 15.4" Notebook PC (Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 538 (Hyper-Threading), 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, Multi Function Drive)

Rating:
Summary: Great Buy
Review: I bought the Toshiba A75-S229 in 12/2004. I primarily use the machine for work and I do heavy coding/development for a living. The hardware configuration that comes out of the box is great for the money I paid for this machine.

Pros: Pentium 4/3.2MHz, HyperThreading, beautiful ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 display, great build-in Atheon Wireless card, great performance, CD and DVD burner (hard to believe for the price)

Cons: needed to upgrade RAM, needed to upgrade to XP Pro (this type of machine should come with XP Pro out-of-the-box), awkward placement of speakers, low battery life (this is expected with a P4 chip).

I would recommend this machine and I am glad I didn't go with a DELL or HP which were my other options. I knew I was going to use this machine hard and so far its performing well above par.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I just got my new Toshiba yesterday, after several weeks of searching. I had decided on the Averatec 1630HS (Which was 1000 dollars at Sam's) with most of the same specs. That was until I found this catch for 1500 dollars, and it really is the better bang for the buck.

First let's start off with the superficial aspects: The A75 has a sleek silver and black design, with a blue cover (with Toshiba written in silver in the center) which looks absolutely stunning. On the inside, the keyboard is black, while the surrounding area is silver. The edges of this notebook are rounded.

The monitor gives the most stunning visual display of any computer-notebook or desktop-that I have ever seen. It has a 15 inch Hi-Defintion widescreen, and it is very sturdy to touch, as well as slick and hard to get dirty. The picture is extremely sharp, vibrant, and bright. It does dim a small bit, however, when going on battery use. This isn't a big factor, however, and it does save battery life.

The battery life--here's the one problem with this computer: Battery life depletes rapidly when unplugged, and only lasts roughly two hours. This is not a computer you can go out into the park, sit with, and watch movies for 3 hours or more.

Beyond that, if you are planning on having a nice portable notebook, that doesn't need to go without charge for hours on end, then this is a great choice. Also, it only costs about 50 dollars more to get a AC plug for the car when traveling, so unless you plan on sitting in the park where there are no jacks, then you should have no problem.

It comes with a Pentium 4 Processor, Windows XP Home (You may want to upgrade to Professional), 512 MB of RAM (standard--you may expand the memory up to 1.5 GB, and I would suggest eventually doing this, as 512 will be laughable when the new Windows OS comes out! --Just two years ago, when I bought my first laptop, 128 MB of RAM was standard! That's really laughable today!), a whopping 80 GB harddrive (standard these days is around 40 GB), an 64 GB RAM ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 Graphics card (will produce okay graphics, but you may want to boost it up to 128 MB RAM--I'll explain how to do this further on in the review), a DVD burner as well as a CD burner drive (These come in handy!). Some people may not be used to this, but it does not include a floppy drive. This is a trivial matter though, since floppy drives have pretty much become substandard and are thus hardly ever used on the newer systems. The CDRW drive performs the task previously performed by floppy drives much more efficiently anyway.

First, looking over these specs, I'm going to give you a short evalution on performance with them: This computer is blazingly fast (and much more speedy than some computers running Windows XP, such as my Dell Desktop which has 1000 MB RAM). The internal wireless card is a great addition, and has the widest range of wireless capability of any I have used so far.

The controls are a bit different, especially the keyboard. To my distate, I find that there's only one function key (located inconveniently on the left hand side of the keyboard, where the ctrl key should be). Several other keys are located in unusual places: The Windows Start key is at the top right hand corner (there's only one) and the ~` key is located at the bottom left, beside the spacebar. Aside from these trivial matters, some additions to the controls are: A play/pause, stop, fast forward, and rewind key pad on the left hand side beneath the power button which come in handy when watching movies or listening to cds. On the side of the computer is a volume control area. (In my previous laptop-a 2 year old Gateway with 128 MB RAM I had to use Function keys to manually change the volume!)

As for the graphics card-I was able to play Final Fantasy XI Online fine with it, but if you have games that require video cards with more memory, you can go into the control panel of the card, go to Frame Buffer, and add up to 128 MB RAM to your graphics card. Note that this will take away as much memory from your system as you add it to your card, so that you end up with about 340 MB system RAM. I reccomend adding at least 250 mb more of ram to your computer before doing this. 500-1000 mb would be ideal to add.

Overall, great buy, great brand. I would reccomend it to anyone who wants the best bang for their buck. It has pretty much everything anyone could want, and should last (with memory upgrades) at least 3-5 years for the typical user. Definately one of the best notebooks on the market. I would reccomend it to anyone looking for a new computer.

Rating:
Summary: ABSOLUTE PERFORMANCE
Review: Pros:
I have used this computer for two weeks now and I have tested as much as I could. This computer works perfect, its performance is awesome. The wide screen is perfect to have a lot of windows open. I have Windows XP Pro and Linux on it and the hard drive is still empty. The wireless card works perfect in both OS's. The sound is decent for a laptop. The multi memory reader is very convenient.

Cons:
I have no complaints, just some details to be aware of. The glare of the screen can be annoying if you have a lot of light from the back. The battery life is not that good, but if battery life is your priority then why are you checking this computer. This computer is about performance. When you type your arms are above the speakers, which make the sound weird.

Rating:
Summary: An exceptional first Lap Top
Review: This was my first lap top. I wanted to read other people reviews and found that the A75 was the one for me. This is an awesomely powerfull computer that i'm going to be using a lot. I love the exceptionally bright and larger than normal screen. I used to play DVD's on my small player, but not any more! I wanted a nice computer to travel with and this was it. Other than the life of the battery i would highly recommend others to buy this computer.