Toshiba Satellite P105 laptop reviewed

Toshiba's latest Satellite P105 laptop is certainly built to impress based on its spec sheet, but the folks at NotebookReview.com wisely decided to see how the laptop as a whole stacked up, putting it through its paces for a full review. While their particular review unit (the P105-S6217) fell squarely in the middle of the range of configuration options, they still found it to be more than enough to handle Vista's considerable demands, even though the usual swath of pre-installed software did its best to slow things down -- gamers, however, will likely want to step up a notch. They were also quite taken with the laptop's sturdy design and spiffy Blue Onyx lid, as well as its glossy display and built-in Harmon Kardon speakers, which they describe as among the best they've seen in a laptop. On the downside, battery life is unsurprisingly lackluster, delivering just an hour of juice on a charge, and the laptop's fan proved to be somewhat of an annoyance, quickly starting and stopping at a loud enough level to attract a few stares. The laptop's keyboard also left them less than impressed, flexing in the middle, with the numeric keypad coming at the expense of some smaller keys on the right-hand side. That said, they still found enough to like about the laptop to give it their recommendation, especially given the relatively low cost and wide range of configuration options.

[Master Jedi Dan @ Mar 3rd 2007 1:03AM]

Great, another "wonderful" toshiba laptop. I'm never giving them my money again after my Satellite A75's problems with the static electricity and the overheating issues. Toshiba just needs to admit that their PC's have too many problems.

[stitifier @ Mar 3rd 2007 1:57AM]

My Toshiba satellite does the same exact thing with its fan. It just randomly starts up, blares as loud as it can for a couple seconds, then dies off. It wouldn't be so bad, really, if it were actually effective in its job, but then it kicks in again only a thirty seconds later, which is just long enough to be both noticeable AND annoying as all hell.

And the battery life sucks. Perhaps not altogether surprising, but this is a Celeron M with shared video memory we're talking about here. Not exactly a gamer's paradise. And Vista? Forget about it-- it can barely handle ObjectDesktop. I can't complain too much since I did get the thing for $250 on Black Friday, but my next laptop is gonna be an MBP, by golly.

[David Jones @ Mar 3rd 2007 12:50PM]

I bought this laptop back in November, did a review of it on my blog. So far I'm pretty satisfied with it, even though my Vista upgrade hasn't gotten here yet. Hopefully soon.
http://www.jonzee.com/Blog/tabid/91/EntryId/2126/Default.aspx

[Unbangyourmom @ Mar 3rd 2007 6:17PM]

still not as good as a dell 1705

[adobochicken @ Mar 4th 2007 3:56AM]

I've use 2 toshiba latops. My recent one, LCD died after a year. 1 hr battery life is a typical Toshiba.
I shopping for different brand name.