Toshiba Satellite M35X-S161 15.4" Notebook PC (Intel Celeron M Processor 350, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

Rating:
Summary: Almost perfect!
Review: I looked at many different laptops before choosing the Toshiba M35X-161. For me, the Toshiba was a perfect combination of name brand reliability, features and price. The 60 Gb disk size, 512 Mb memory, WXGA wide screen and full size keyboard are a rare combination in this price class. Weight is still manageable at 6.5 pounds. The wireless connection worked right out of the box with no fuss at all. The Celeron and integrated graphics card are suitable for most non-gamers.

The big drawback of the M35X-161 is the battery. It is only a 4 cell battery providing a mere 1.5 hours of use. Consider an additional 8 cell battery a requirement. The 8 cell battery should provide 3.5 hours of use leaving the original battery in a more suitable role of backup.



Rating:
Summary: Decent specs, but miserable battery life
Review: You can find this Toshiba at Best Buy and Circuit City, so if possible, I recommend you take a look in person to see if you like it. The screen is probably the best part of this value-oriented laptop. ("Satellite" is the name of the value-oriented series of laptops from Toshiba.) It's widescreen and displays vivid colors.

Otherwise, the machine is quite mediocre in performance. It has a Celeron M processor, which is good for surfing the web, running Office applications, doing everyday digital image editing (but not camera raw files), and other tasks that don't demand lots of CPU power. Don't expect to do video editing or play the latest 3D games on this machine; neither the CPU nor the video chip can handle high-powered computation needs, even though the laptop does have plenty of RAM and hard disk space.

Unfortunately, Toshiba bundles a miserably short-life battery with this laptop. If you watch a DVD movie on this, with brightness and sound volume set to medium, you'll barely finish a 1.5-hr. movie before the machine shuts down. Surfing on wi-fi is better, but I consider this kind of battery life pretty much unacceptable. The only thing keeping me from givign the M35X-S161 a 2-star rating is its affordability -- shop around and you can find it for cheap.

In short, this Toshiba is good as a low-cost laptop, esp. as it sports a nice widescreen LCD screen. But if you plan to watch a lot of movies on this, be sure to get the larger-capacity battery.