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64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent little creature!, November 24, 2009
Recently a Sony tx770p given to me had it's hard drive die on me after 2 months of really getting used to using the laptop. I have had my eye out for a long time for a replacement for it that would be comparable: 11.x screen, 1366 x 768 screen res, light weight, excellent battery life, excellent trackpad, and a particular type of keyboard that is similar to "chicklet style" but slightly different. Well, I finally found a replacement in the person of the Toshiba T115-S1100. Essentially it is a more-than-standard powerful netbook style computer.
Pro's:
1. Screen and size - LED backlit and "TruBright" ... lovely, crisp and clear! And 1366 x 768 screen resolution to boot, which is the minimum screen resolution I find actually usable when doing day to day things like browsing the internet and reading docs (both .pdf and word processing). It weighs roughly 3.5 lbs - nice and light on your shoulder as you carry it around!
2. Battery life - with everything turned off I have been able to get a little over 10 hours doing simple word processing or reading docs on this machine.
3. DDR3 RAM - the machine comes with a 2 gb chip in one slot, with another slot available to upgrade the memory. It maxes out at 4 gb. The ddr3 makes a noticeable difference in netbook level machines in my opinion.
4. Windows 7 Home - that is, a full installation of the OS, giving you way more options than Windows 7 Starter. The OS is only the 32 bit version, but it works fine considering the physical specs of the machine proper.
5. Keyboard - I personally really like the keyboard "style" used on this machine - there is spacing in between the keys a 'la "chicklet style", but the part of the keys you actually hit with your fingers are a teeny bit smaller than the bottom part of the keys, providing extra space and in general a sturdy feel when typing.
6. Trackpad - a pleasure to use. Responsive and just plain well made.
7. HDMI port - for those of you interested in such things this is a plus!
8. Web Cam - a 2 mp camera, a bit more for those of you who would use this than can be found on your average note/netbooks.
9. Intel 4500 graphics card - true, not that great, but still enough to use the hdmi port out and provide good battery life. Much more powerful than most offerings on netbooks in general.
10. ULV CPU - yes, it is single core and it is a Celeron (something many might associate with poor performance or "second rate"). However, the fact that it is an ULV means that not only is it good for battery life but it can actually crank out a fair amount of speed. This cpu runs at 1.3 ghz, 800mhz FSB, and has 2 mb of cache on it. Combine that with the ddr3 ram and a sata hard drive and you get quite a nice bit of speed for a machine its size and price.
11. Hard drive size - you get 250gb, whereas most netbook style machines give you a 160gb. Nice!
Cons:
1. Fingerprint Magnet - Argh! This thing (like many of the black colored machines produced today) attracts fingerprints to the outside of the machine and all around the outside of the screen proper. Frustrating.
2. No bluetooth - would have been a nice extra feature to add in. One should note, though, that built-in bluetooth is not an option on any of the Satellite T115 models available out there. It would be easy enough to get an external adapter though if it were really needed.
3. Mouse buttons - the mouse buttons used are "rocker style", that is, one button over the area that goes downwards on either side. I am not a fan of the rocker style buttons myself and find them difficult to use. Fortunately I had an external wireless mouse already.
4. Audio card - I have read accounts of people who have found the audio card far too weak to send noise out through the laptop speakers, although the sound through the headphones is quite fine. For me this is not an issue as I use it only with headphones. A simple "fix" for this is simply to uninstall the specific drivers for the audio card and opt for the microsoft standard drivers instead - they are reported to be a big improvement over sending sounds out of the speakers directly.
Middle-of-the-Road:
1. Heat control - it can get moderately warm when doing somewhat intensive tasks, like watching video files, for example. Nothing bad, but it is noticeable.
2. Wireless card - it is 802.11b/g rank only. This is kind of "for the par" on netbook style machines in general, but why not put in an N rank?
3. "Fusion" finish in Nova Black - the external decorations on the machine proper - it does not really excite me, but on the other hand it did not turn me off to considering to purchase the machine in general.
4. Indicator Lights - there are nine of them, and they are all on the front of the machine. If they were all active your machine would look like a small string of Christmas tree lights! :) Seriously though, it is not so bad, I simply prefer fewer indicator lights on a machine in general.
5. Standard port offerings - 3 usb 2.0 ports, mic/headphones jacks, sd card slot, vga out port, kensington lock, 10/100 ethernet.
6. USB sleep and charge - basically some software by which you can configure a certain device to draw a charge form the laptop while it is asleep. Not really something I can use or am interested in, but perhaps some may find it useful.
7. Overall Build - the machine is fairly sturdy and the screen and keyboard do not flex much at all. Good build in general overall from a "home line" product.
8. No optical drive - either internal or external. Again, I had one of these already, so this was not much of an issue, but to make dvd recovery discs you will need one.
****
Conclusion: Overall I must say that I am very satisfied with this little machine. It is an excellent replacement for me, basically a "super-powered netbook": that is, one that portability, connectivity and battery life of a netbook, yet has more options and "umph" than most offerings out there. For a little more cpu speed and wireless N you can pay $40 more or so and get the T115-S1105. For me, however, this machine more than does everything I would want it to do for its size and price.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love my new Laptop!, January 7, 2010
Well in a HUGE surprise my lovely wife got me this laptop for Christmas. Honestly it is virtually perfect. If I was going to spec out a netbook/laptop this would have been it. The Low Voltage Celeron is great for saving battery life. It is also sufficient to run Windows 7 Home Premium, surfing, doc prep, email, and remote access. I am currently running Windows 7 on a monster Core i7 and this little machine can hold it's own with the monster when doing the simple things mentioned above. I would not try and render video with it or anything that is processor intensive, however it is very sufficient at playing videos and photo edits. The LED screen is bright, clear and AMAZING.
The only things that are a bit troubling are: 1) Due to the shiny case all finger prints and smudge marks are noticeable. 2) While 2Gbs of memory is good - for $50.00 I increased the memory to 4gbs. The system can only use 3.3Gb of the 4GBs due to the 32bit operating system, but the extra memory certainly helped. 3) Also for some reason my wireless network card intermittently stops working, but a quick reboot and that fixes that. I am assuming that it is a Windows driver and I am looking for an update.
I give this machine a 5 of 5 due to the fact that it does everything that it represents it does. If you are looking for a lightweight, low power, long battery life laptop/netbook, then I would highly recommend this computer.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Only costs a little more than a netbook...., February 7, 2010
I got mine for fifty dollars less from a NorCal electronics discounter. I wanted to try one of the CULV powered "netbook class" computers to see if it can support Hulu. My Atom powered netbooks do fine on home-brew h.264 coded videos, but stumble on Hulu - I have to run Hulu at 360p inside a browser and be very careful about running other apps at the same time - even antivirus (running memory resident) sometimes needs to be shut off.
On the Atom netbooks, Windows experience for processor calculations per second is typically 2.4. On my new Toshiba, it is 2.9. Not a huge increase, but the computer is noticeably zippier in a hard disk virus scan, downloading and installing programs, etc. I can run youtube dot com/html5 beta test videos full screen in 360p, something I cannot due on the netbooks. So overall this is faster. I cannot run Hulu full screen even in standard rez satisfactorily even on this more powerful netbook.
I may have a weaker battery in my version - I only show an indicated 4.5 hours of battery life from the battery monitor, but I have the power settings adjusted to high performance with full screen brightness.
Oh yeah I should add that the processor and graphics are driving a higher rez screen than on Atom netbooks, but it is STILL zippier - on Atom netbooks I have with similar high rez graphics, the extra pixel driving takes a noticeable toll on their performance.
Overall this netbook gives a very satisfying level of performance and is definitely more powerful than an Atom netbook.
So your choice is to pay about $100 more than a barebones Atom with 1gb/160gb for this CULV (Celeron 743) powered "super" netbook with 11.6" screen in higher rez with a bigger keyboard and 2gb/250gb - or get the Atom because it weighs about a pound less, is smaller, and can have up to 4-6 hours more battery life assuming the more powerful 6 cell battery option.
If this is going to be your primary laptop, I'd go with the Toshiba. Simply a better keyboard, larger hard disk, prettier version of Win7, faster processor.
But if you need an ultralight machine for frequent travel, I still recommend the Atom netbooks. But don't upgrade them with memory, bigger harddrive, or you may as well just pay the small extra for this better spec'd Toshiba.
One caveat - if you can use an iPod Touch for light browsing needs on most trips, you might prefer this more robust CULV netbook instead of the lighter Atom netbooks.
BTW Toshiba but a horrendous number of its own accessory programs installed on my machine, which took be about an hour to uninstall. Machine was faster after.
Keep in mind that neither this Tosh nor the typical netbook is going to provide an ideal Hulu experience, although with the superior graphics in this machine (GMA 4500) it SHOULD be much better once Adobe cleans up its act with Flash 10.1 which is beta 2 right now (and only works in the beta version with Nvida graphics chips despite Adobes claims to the contrary). If Hulu would run on this significantly better than on an Atom, I wouldn't even consider an Atom netbook.
My current favorite Atom netbooks, in order, are the HP Mini 210, the Asus 1001p, and the Acer a0532h which range from $300-350.
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