Toshiba Satellite A665-S6055 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop black

Toshiba Satellite A665-S6055 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop (Black) (Personal Computers) 

I am about to course a Master in Germany in Engineering, and I was looking for a laptop that could stand the exigency that a career in Engineering demands. This means, a decent video card (Nvidia 310) for my 3D modeling software, specialy Solidworks, a fast processor (Intel i5) por multitasking and calculations. And so far I can not complain, this laptop does all of these tasks very smoothly. But in particular, it is the new i5 processor what worths the money here. Believe me, if you are one of those like me that had a dilema between the cheaper i5, or put an extra money to get a laptop with i7, save that money, because i5 is more than enough for high speed demanding tasks (and remember I use engineering programs). I guess that if you are into multimedia editing of large videos and photos at the same time, then i7 would be your best choice. But for the rest 85% percent of us that will never take full advantage of this processor, it is just not worth it.

But I was also looking for a entertainment center for my 2 year academic program. This means, that I wanted something that could gather TV, DVD, Music, Nice resolution (1366 x 768, it is not 1080p, but you wont even notice), nice grapchics card and nice speakers in one laptop. And this Toshiba Satellite A665 S6055 does it all. DVD movies play very smoothly and vivid, plus the awesome sound coming from this pair of stereo Harman/Kardon speakers, which are very loud and crisp. I even use them as portable speakers to play my Zune thanks to "Sleep and music" feature.

Not to mention the design, limited edition because of the 25th anniversary. It is just beautifull and very stylish, less prone to fingerprints, the keyboard is great because the keys are a little separated one from each other and it is very confortable to type in. The numeric 10 pad is an useful add-on for a person like me that use numers the whole day. Windows 7 is a nice tool, I am just getting used to it, but certainly is so much better than Vista.

This A665 series laptop is so low priced, not because of lower performance, but because of lower hard drive capacity (who needs more than 285 GB?) and for having an Nvidia 310 instead of a 330M (If you are not a hard gamer, the 310 is perfect). So, for the price, this is an awesome entertaining/working laptop, REALLY fast, Big screen yet portable that I highly reccomend.

Buy Toshiba Satellite A665-S6055 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop

Toshiba Satellite A665-S6055 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop (Black) (Personal Computers) 

I am about to course a Master in Germany in Engineering, and I was looking for a laptop that could stand the exigency that a career in Engineering demands. This means, a decent video card (Nvidia 310) for my 3D modeling software, specialy Solidworks, a fast processor (Intel i5) por multitasking and calculations. And so far I can not complain, this laptop does all of these tasks very smoothly. But in particular, it is the new i5 processor what worths the money here. Believe me, if you are one of those like me that had a dilema between the cheaper i5, or put an extra money to get a laptop with i7, save that money, because i5 is more than enough for high speed demanding tasks (and remember I use engineering programs). I guess that if you are into multimedia editing of large videos and photos at the same time, then i7 would be your best choice. But for the rest 85% percent of us that will never take full advantage of this processor, it is just not worth it.

But I was also looking for a entertainment center for my 2 year academic program. This means, that I wanted something that could gather TV, DVD, Music, Nice resolution (1366 x 768, it is not 1080p, but you wont even notice), nice grapchics card and nice speakers in one laptop. And this Toshiba Satellite A665 S6055 does it all. DVD movies play very smoothly and vivid, plus the awesome sound coming from this pair of stereo Harman/Kardon speakers, which are very loud and crisp. I even use them as portable speakers to play my Zune thanks to "Sleep and music" feature.

Not to mention the design, limited edition because of the 25th anniversary. It is just beautifull and very stylish, less prone to fingerprints, the keyboard is great because the keys are a little separated one from each other and it is very confortable to type in. The numeric 10 pad is an useful add-on for a person like me that use numers the whole day. Windows 7 is a nice tool, I am just getting used to it, but certainly is so much better than Vista.

This A665 series laptop is so low priced, not because of lower performance, but because of lower hard drive capacity (who needs more than 285 GB?) and for having an Nvidia 310 instead of a 330M (If you are not a hard gamer, the 310 is perfect). So, for the price, this is an awesome entertaining/working laptop, REALLY fast, Big screen yet portable that I highly reccomend.

Buy Toshiba Satellite A665D-S6051 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop

Toshiba Satellite A665D-S6051 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop (Black) (Personal Computers) 

This laptop is really the perfect laptop for entertainment purposes. It has a ATI Radeon HD 4250 and the m880G chipset working with the processor for a decent GPU, but it would be certainly not ideal for any serious gaming or intensive 3d rendering.

As an entertainment laptop though, this computer has just about everything right about it. The 16" screen is beautiful; the 1.6ghz quad core Phenom II is a wonderful multi-tasker and great for media. The speakers are absolutely unbelievable for being internal laptop speakers; They actually sound good, at loud volumes! Unheard of in my experience with laptop speakers. The bass is amplified surprisingly well given the constraints, as are the tones in general. There is a very important program on the computer that allow you to control the audio your computer is putting out: It is called "Realtek HD Audio Manager", and can be found in your control panel. It will allow you to utilize an equalizer and Dolby enhancement.

Also great are the many ports that are found on this computer. There are 4 USB, one being a hybrid USB/eSATA. There is (importantly for entertainment purposes) an HDMI output, as well as a VGA output, just in case, I guess. The keyboard is back lit, as is the screen, so typing in low-lit conditions is a breeze. The keyboard and the touch pad that are on this computer are of truly excellent quality; I have had other Toshibas recently that had much worse touch pads and keyboards and so I feel really happy that I do not have this issue. This computer is not that heavy, but it is 16", so understand that it is not ultra portable.

The type of battery that is in this computer is very efficient with energy consumption and can last for well over 3 hours (nearly 4, actually) without really other than a little screen brightness sacrificed (pressing the "eco" utility button is all it takes to get close to 4 hours without really sacrificing much. This is a great balance for me, because most other laptops of this type have much more power-hungry processors in them that eat up the battery in closer to two hours, as opposed to the 3 to 4 I get with this computer. This is much easier to work with the approximately over 2 hours with most other computers of this type. Also helpful in this area of energy saving is the technology that allows you to listen to music, charge devices, or do pretty much anything you want through the computer's ports while the computer itself is in sleep mode.

As for the cons of this computer, they are really limited. It is a great computer, especially for the mid $600s, but I do wish that the hard drive speed was 7,200 RPM. I'm not sure if the 5,400 RPM hard drive will create a bottleneck with the computing ability of this laptop, but in my initial tests on this computer, there has been only slight lag versus what I would expect on a 7,200 RPM computer. I may try to put in a cool, power sipping 7,200 RPM internal SATA drive at the end of my 1 year warranty, as I could just take the SATA drive in here already and put into a casing and hook up through the eSATA port as a backup drive. Two benefits from one move! A related hardware gripe is that the M880G chipset/ ATI Radeon 4250 is a decent GPU for everyday applications, but it could stand to have been beefed up a bit...

Another con with this computer is that the USB ports are awkwardly placed near the outsides of the wrists when the fingers are on the home row keys, and plugging the USB mouse into a port located in this location makes you have move the mouse around the piece jutting out of the USB port. This is really only a problem when working with limited space, and since the touch pad is a great one, this isn't too big of a problem, really.

The last con would be the bloatware. There is really quite a bit of software loaded onto this computer, and with some of the programs, you will probably decide to uninstall, as I did. There are useful programs and there are useless ones; be prepared to remove some stuff that you don't need, though.

Bottom line, this computer is an awesome entertainment machine. The processor is a great choice for multi-tasking and energy efficiency. It is really a good processor for this computer. The other features like harman/kardon speakers are excellent, especially if you are going to use your computer primarily for media ass I am.


Edit- The price on this computer has fluctuated quite a bit recently. I want to note that this computer, despite having a quad-core processor, is certainly not worth as much as an i5 or similar processor. I love AMD, and believe that their new line of Turion II X2 processors seem to be the sweet spot with them and laptops. 2.3ghz, two cores, modern processor technologies... These Turions don't have the four cores like the P920 in this laptop, but since these cores can't be utilized completely in today's usage, I have found that the higher clock rate and only two cores seems to work better for most any application that I have tried. This laptop is not bad, with it's four cores and very low power consumption. However, compared to the Turion II X2 P520, a processor with higher clock speed, equal power consumption, and two fewer cores, I think it will show that the two, faster cores work better for most processes. It should be noted that both of these processors have 2mb L2 cache, but the four cores spreads it to 512k per core while it is 1mb per core on the dual-core.