PseudoRandomDragon Posted July 18, 2004 Share Posted July 18, 2004 Product: Toshiba Satellite A45-S151 Specs: Mobile Intel P4 Processor @ 2.8GHz 60GB Hard Drive 512MB DDR SDRAM 64MB Integrated Video memory (dynamic) Intel Extreme Graphics 15.0" diagonal XGA display Titanium Sterio speakers Wireless-G card DVD-ROM/CD-RW A modem WinXP Home, MS Works and OneNote Battery: Li-l, lasts almost 3hrs What I paid: $1,100 My review: For its price, I must say this is an exceptional laptop. As soon as I got it, I immediately formatted and installed Win2000 on it. It runs well with it and their site supplies drivers for Win2000. Mandrake Linux didn't go as well with it, but Toshiba is hardly ever Linux friendly. I am going to start off with the bad: the weakest part of this laptop seems to be the integrated SoundMax sound card. The second weakest is the speakers on the laptop itself, but one cannot expect much from a laptop anyway. Upon installing the drivers for the Soundmax card, a nice little hour glass appears on the login screen for two seconds. Additionally, when you warm boot the computer, the sound doesn't work at all! One must shut off the computer completely to keep sound. There is a fix for this, but it is sadly only for WinXP. Additionally, I had to deal with a clipping problem with the sound. I eventually found that the cause of this is if the WEP key for my wireless card is too large, then clipping occurs with the sound. Makes sense, since the sound card is seated right next to the wireless card. I never had a sound card with so many problems, oh well. Graphics are good. It plays games like Warcraft 3 and Counterstrike with no problems at all. Unread Tournament works good as well, but I have to tone down most of the graphics to get a good FPS. The most the computer can do is 1024x768 w/ 32bit color. It also has support for other monitors and a TVout port. This laptop comes with 4 USB 2.0 ports, LAN, monitor, printer port and a modem port. It also has one slot for a PCMCIA card. Sorry, no PS/2 ports. The laptop itself looks very nice, but is heavy and somewhat big. The top is blue, the rest is silver and black. The track pad is something I really don't like to use in general, but this one makes a mouse almost a requirement. There is nothing really wrong with it, but the texture is rough as well. After a few moments my claws start hurting because it is so hard to move them across the track pad. As for the keyboard, there is nothing really special about it. The caps lock button has a light on it, I guess that is cool. Oh, and the windows button is on the top right. Tech support I tried out just to see how good they are. They wouldn't even listen to my problem because I use Win2k instead of WinXP :p All in all I'd have to say this laptop was worth it. All that stuff for just $1,100! For a laptop that is pretty damn good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elmo Posted July 18, 2004 Share Posted July 18, 2004 needs pics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PseudoRandomDragon Posted July 19, 2004 Author Share Posted July 19, 2004 I was going to add them, but my camera is on the fritz, so I found some online: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sim31 Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 I believe Toshiba is a great maker of laptops, no doubt! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stncttr908 Veteran Posted July 19, 2004 Veteran Share Posted July 19, 2004 This model doesn't seem to have a niche. You said it was heavy, so it's not really a travelling laptop. That is also made clear by the fact that its battery is half of what a Centrino's is. It also isn't a desktop replacement, since it doesn't have the graphical power for games and whatnot. So, what the heck do you use it for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VG11489 Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Decided to sell it huh lol ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PseudoRandomDragon Posted July 19, 2004 Author Share Posted July 19, 2004 It is for somewhat strong people who don't have 1,500 to burn on a computer. What? 7.2LBs is too much for you to carry? Oh you poor thing. With laptops you can't complain about graphical power either. Laptops just don't have graphical power, unless you spend $2000+ on an Alienware or something. The "niche" is that it delivers a very reasonable amount of power for its price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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