It will be now about three years that I will be using the laptop of Toshiba Satellite 2805 ?S201 with DVD player. It was a gift from US and a DVD player three year back was a fairly novel thing. Of course DVDs were not easily available so it was VCDs that were used initially.
Overall : I found Toshiba laptops to be excellent in terms of hardware ( MS software works the same everywhere) especially keyboard and DVD player. It was bought below $1000 price point and even with that it had a floppy drive, DVD player, USB ports, PC card port, modem, LAN and a serial port and 13 inch screen which was about all that one normally would need.
It has a reasonable weight but I have a theory wherein I feel that the ? TOTAL WEIGHT OF ANY LAPTOP with all its ACCESSORIES is the SAME? Computer speed : Being a relic the computer is only a celeron 600 Mhz with 32 MB of RAM and this makes it somewhat slower. Of course you can never say it is a ?slow? computer but with time all of them appear slower.
It is interesting to note that although switching applications is somewhat slower, all applications by self run OK. That is to say, DVDs, VCDs, MP3 CDs, MS Office etc. etc. run fairly OK and I woudnt say any application is not working well. Memory : It has a small hard disk size of 6 Gig which is really a pain now that I have access to lot of Divx videos and other stuff. There were no combo drives available at that point and I have used an old 4x external CD writer to get around it.
The RAM of 32 MB is enough but definitely not sufficient. DVD player : This laptop was designed to be used for DVD even when screen is off but then as it happens, I still haven?t figured out how to do that. It is tough enough to do it with computer on?.It has a very convenient TV out with which I have played many DVDs and Divx videos on the TV making it very useful.
Other accessories : The speakers of this laptop are really nice as it definitely shows a good quality of output. The sound volume is rather low but then I don?t think more is possible. The Modem and LAN cards have worked flawlessly. I have found that the keyboard is really nice and comfortable which is surprising in a laptop. The screen is somewhat smaller then normal today but it is very good and is easy on the eye even when you work for long hours.
They have given a very nice bag with the laptop which is so good that I usually use that for travelling. Overall I feel that this is a really excellent example of a laptop where in the form and function are really well done. One of course wishes a CD writer and a A/V in ports with a little more HDD and RAM.
I have compared this with IBM laptops and I feel that Toshiba is more curvy and better looking while the IBM is somewhat rugged and clunky looking. I haven?t had too much experience of other brands but it is very likely I will continue with Toshiba in future also.