Friday, December 23, 2005

Toshiba Satellite M45-s331 notebook review

Maximize your mobile performance with the Toshiba Satellite M45-S331, the ideal notebook PC for the savvy professional who needs to travel light. Featuring one of the speediest Intel Pentium M (Centrino) processors, the M45-S331 can sweetly handle today's demanding business productivity software suites. It also offers powerful multimedia capabilities for presentations--and for unwinding with a DVD movie while travelling. The M45-S331 features a large 80 GB hard drive, 512 MB of installed RAM, a 15.4-inch screen, DVD SuperMulti optical drive that burns both CDs and multiple DVD formats, and integrated 54g wireless connectivity.

The Toshiba Satellite M45 series, which isn't customizable, offers the same elegant case design as the Satellite M40 series. The Satellite M40's configurable components include Celeron M and Pentium M processors; between 256MB and 2GB of slow 333MHz SDRAM; moderate 5,400 rpm hard drives in capacities ranging from 40GB to 100GB; several secondary optical storage drives, such as CD and double-layer DVD burners; a wide 15.4-inch display in different native resolutions; and various types of Wi-Fi cards. Preconfigured combinations of these components comprise the Satellite M45 series, which Toshiba sells through online resellers and local computer stores. The Satellite M45-S165, which costs $999, a very reasonable amount in light of its overall healthy configuration. While the system has respectable features and an economical price, it suffers from abysmal battery life.

Screen, Graphcs and Sound
The 15.4-inch widescreen Ultimate TrueBrite TFT active matrix LCD screen provides a bright, vivid display and allows images to be seen from a wider angle than most notebooks. The integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 video/graphics card (with 128 MB of shared video memory) provides HDTV support with native 16x9 formats for wide screen flat panels. You'll also get good 3D rendering for today's immersive gaming titles. It also offers 16-bit Realtek ALC250 sound and internal stereo speakers.

Specifications:
Windows XP Home Edition, Intel Pentium M 1.6 GHz, # Mobile Intel 915GM Express
, 512 MB DDR RAM, 80GB HardDrive, CD-RW: 40x (read), 16x (write), 10x (rewrite), DVD±RW / DVD-RAM Integrated, 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD), Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Fast Ethernet, 15.4 inches Display, Weight: 5.2 pounds.
Rating 7.4/10.
Price $999.

Find more info at TigerDirect , Amazon

Customer Review:
I bought this laptop about 4 months ago and I am very pleased with it. Everything works great as advertised and I am very impressed with its wireless capabilities. All the peripheral devices that I plugged into it were instantly recognized and installed without me having to load any software. These included a wireless mouse, flash drive, and USB hub.

There is a design problem with the laptop however. While working in Battery mode with wireless turned on, if you plug in the AC, it freezes. Nothing works it won't even turn off. The first time this happened to me it was scary but I found a solution. If you keep pressing the on/off switch for 5 seconds it will reset itself. The problem can be avoided by simply turning off wireless before plugging in AC, easily done since there is a mechanical switch to do this.My biggest dissapointment is with Toshiba support. The webpage doesn't mention anything about the wireless freeze, even though it's known issue by now. As far as resetting the computer they say to insert a pin into the reset hole like the old laptops. This laptop doesn't have a reset hole, you just have to press and hold the on/off switch.I highly recommend this laptop.

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