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The Toshiba notebooks are
generally a great bunch, helped along by Toshiba’s eye for what
the consumer wants to see. This time they had a few problems but
once again they produced more than a decent laptop. The L25-S119
is a stark contrast to the Gateway
NX200S. Gateway’s low-end notebook is a great performer that
sports a good look. It does have a few problems with the screen
and speakers but excels in all other categories. On the other
hand, the Toshiba looks good, blasts it speakers and flaunts its
15 in screen but does not have the battery power or the
performance from a businessman’s standpoint. They are two low end
notebooks from different manufacturers and different styles.
The price is also suggested at $899 which is rather high for the
cheapest notebook designed by a manufacturer but it can be found
for under $700 at places such as Circuit City. This once again
proves the power of shopping around a bit on the internet, thus
cutting the price nearly by 25%. It’s still a bit pricey in
comparison to some of the other low end notebooks I have handled
but the screen alone must cost a good part of that $899.
As I have mentioned several times already, the L25-S119 has an
amazing screen powered by the Toshiba TruBrite. This technology
allows the viewer to enjoy movies and games at many different
vantage points. The glare resistant sheen reduces the ambience and
gives the laptop a more pleasurable feeling. The TruBrite
technology is an average feature of all Toshiba notebooks now days
and it makes low end notebooks like the L25-S119 measure up to the
high end Dell and HP laptops in terms of screen quality. The 15
inch display is extremely impressive and is something that many
low and mid range notebooks lack. Most of the notebooks I’ve
tested out have had slightly dimmed screens taking away a large
effect in movies. Toshiba made sure that this laptop came equipped
with a sharp, bright screen and to add to the movie experience
they threw in a pair of decent speakers. The pair of powerful
speakers can be heard over twenty feet away. They were not the
excellent speakers that the XPS Generation may sport but despite
the problems in bass and depth it gives a great effect when
watching movies like Star Wars. There is a distinct difference
between other low end laptops that had horrible speakers where one
could not even watch a movie without cringing and the sound
problems. There are very very few low end notebooks I’d be
comfortable watching a movie on and not be afraid of being laughed
at and the L25-S119 is one of those select few.
The idea of all notebooks is the tradeoffs. Each manufacturer has
the checklist of all the features they could include in a notebook
and are forced to decide what to keep and what to leave out in
order to fall within the price quoted for the notebook. In
deciding what is important for them in a notebook, some companies
make good choices, some companies make terrible choices, and some
companies make a few good picks and a few bad ones. I wish that
Toshiba had traded down their screen ever so slightly so they
could focus more on the battery life of the L25-S119.
Watching movies on the Satellite is fine as long it is stuck to an
AC outlet. The power is then sufficient to handle the powerful
screen that radiates a crisp, clean picture. The Toshiba is lucky
to last an hour when playing a movie powered only by battery. This
is pathetic in comparison to Gateway’s star NX200S who lasted over
two hours easily. It ranks among the lowest battery power I have
ever tested in a notebook. I credit most of this to both Toshiba’s
disregard for the battery’s importance and the screen draining so
much of the energy. If the battery is weak then it becomes more
useful to simply buy a desktop. It will be cheaper and the
portability will not be sacrificed greatly as there is only an
hour of free roaming away from an AC outlet with the L25-S119.
Other than the battery issues, the notebook comes out with a good
showing.
The specifications are solid with the Toshiba, running a 1.5 Ghz
270M Celeron processor with 256 MB RAM and a 60GB hard drive. The
memory could be improved up to 2 GB which may be the only problem
with the specifications as the hard drive is larger than most
notebooks in this range like the Gateway. I recommend that every
notebook be upgraded to at least 512MB RAM. This may be a little
bias but all notebooks should be able to support the new computer
games that release sporting their amazing graphics. Given that the
video card will be less than spectacular and the game will not
displayed to its fullest potential, it can still run on the
computer and be played. The processor also runs a bit faster than
the Gateway, but the Gateway offered a much lower price for
slightly less impressive specifics. Toshiba’s strong
specifications and spectacular light and sound make it a great
multimedia notebook.
Toshiba comes with a strong media heavyweight for a low range
notebook but compromises too much for a person whose primary use
of a notebook is to work. The Toshiba is still great as a notebook
to enjoy and spoil playing movies and such. RATING: 8 out of 10.
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