Toshiba Mobile Satellite M505D-S4930 Laptop Review
November 20th, 2009
Toshiba Mobile Satellite M505D-S4930 14.0-Inch Black/Grey Laptop Review from George Cauttero Guru. A Great Laptop from a great manufacturer, First of all, this laptop is a great value. It is powerful and portable without being too expensive. After owning this computer for about 4 days I am very pleased with its overall performance, stability, and quality.
Hardware:
The computer is sturdily built with high-quality plastics and has a secure feel, even while carrying it. The keyboard is of average size and not cramped at all. Most models of Toshiba laptops come with Harmon/Kardon speakers integrated and they are crisp and clean, although lacking some bass, but that’s to be expected from portable speakers. The monitor is a gorgeous 1366×768 widescreen TFT-LCD. Colors are accurate and text is sharp. The ATI Radeon graphics make simple work of video, but I haven’t tested 3D graphics yet. You might be dissuaded, as I was originally, by the 64-bit Windows Vista, but I assure you I have had no 64-bit compatibility problems with it. This is largely because the AMD Turion x2 processor is x86-64. This means it is capable of running 32- and 64-bit programs. Vista has two Program Files folders, one marked Program Files (x86), for programs running under that architecture. Take note of the USB/eSATA/Sleep-and-charge port. If you bought an external hard drive with eSATA, never again will you want to use USB. SATA is the same connection the hard drive connects to the motherboard with and eSATA just takes it outside. Buy an external disk with it, you will not be disappointed. Battery life seems good, estimating about 2 hours 20 minutes on a full charge. Future benchmarks will be added. Battery life can probably be extended by enabling Toshiba’s ECO mode, which leads me into the next section:
Toshiba Software:
New computers are often loaded with “bloatware”, stuff the manufacturer throws in like free trials and useless utilities or whatnot. While this computer was no exception, the bloat was minimal and it actually comes with quite a few useful utilities, such as the ECO utility. By pressing a button on the computer or enabling ECO mode in the utility, power consumption is automatically reduced especially while using battery power. The screen is dimmed, the decorative LEDs are switched off and the processor is allowed a little less power, all to squeeze out some extra time from your battery. Plus, you can track your computer’s power usage in real-time with the utility to see just how much juice it’s using. Note: the processor will run a little warm in ECO mode because the utility turns the fan off. The fan activates when the hard drive temperature reaches “50%” (as shown in the Toshiba Health Monitor – another useful program). There are many more Toshiba utilities of note: programs to assist you in connecting to a wireless network, hard drive monitoring to prevent damage, computer diagnostic tools, and many others which will help the user.
The only real con of note is Vista itself. I’m a longtime XP user and I also really like Windows 7 but Vista seems like the awkward cousin-in-law of the family. Possibly the most annoying thing it does is constantly nag you about permissions with UAC, but this argument is not something that is new to the internet. I will most definitely be upgrading to Windows 7 (which this and any other Toshiba laptop purchased between June 26th, 2009 through January 31st, 2010 is eligible for. More here: [...].
So far I’m really pleased with the computer and its quality. I will update this review when I have further benchmarks and information.
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You may also want to read Sony VAIO VGN-SR510G/H 13.3-Inch Laptop from l5creative.com site.
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