PreviousFriday 12 September 2003, 5:27 PM
Good value entry notebook
You can purchase this neat-looking laptop from online sellers such as ebuyer or dabs for the most basic version (celeron 2.0Ghz/30Gb/256DDR/DVD/WinXP Home) for UNDER 488 pounds (ex VAT). And their stocks went really fast as well, cos last time I checked, they only had the expensive version (2.0GHz/20Gb/256DDR/CDRW+DVD combo/WinXP Pro) left in stock.
Overall build quality is good, though I did notice after the lid is shut, a narrow gap (1-1.5mm) still exists around the corners and edges, so it's not really looking "water-tight" (as if we are going to submerge it?!)
14.1" screen is solid and reasonably bright, (can addjust brightness from 1-8 scales through function key combo), and as any Toshiba notebooks, the "Windows" key is re-positioned at the top-right corner on the keyboard; its original location is replaced by a "Fn" key, so you have to get used to that.
The keys are large enough for the fingers, producing tiny clicks when pressed, letting you know that you actually had typed that letter, and the keystrokes are responsive enough though sometimes if typed too fast and hard, do feel the keyboard being a bit "thin".
One free slot is left for future sodimm upgrade, so the existing 256mb pc2100 ddr won't be wasted, unless of course you are going for the 1GB option which is the maximum amount supported (by fitting 2x 512Mb modubles you have to throw away that 256Mb module).
30Gb storage is adequate for most mobile users, which is 10Gb more than the 117-pound-more-expensive version! A DVD drive without CDRW combo option as well as NOT being fitted with a wireless LAN card makes it slightly harder to backup and transfer large amounts of data, unless you get an external CDRW/USB flash drive, or are willing to spend a bit more time on hooking up the LAN cables onto your desktop computers. But again you can buy a separate wireless LAN card fairly cheap these days (i.e. around 20-30 pounds for the 11mps type).
Software bundle is really basic though
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