A Review of the Budget Priced 15.4" Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527 Laptop

Recently I've decided to take a look at the newest released Toshiba satellites. I have gotten a hold of the Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527 and given it a spin. This is a budget laptop and often manufactures tend to be a little skimpy when the prices drop. I'll let you know if that happens with the A135-S4527. First though let me start with some of the basics.

Hardware

Display: 15.4" screen

Processor: 1.73 GHz Intel Intel Duo Core

Storage Space: 120GB hard drive

RAM: 1GB RAM (unexpandible)

Optical Drive: A CD burner with integrated dual-layer DVD +/- R RW

Graphics Accelerator: Integrated Intel GMA 950 video card (steals 256 MB of your system RAM)

Demensions:14.2" x 10.5" x 1.45"

Weight: about 6lbs

With an initial glance at the XGA screen working away at a resolution of 1280 x 800 this Toshiba makes the best kind of first impression, even for a budget laptop. The screen has trubrite technology and is bright and clean. It does tend to have some problems with reflections in bright light. This notebook is powerful enough for school work and general web surfing. It isn't a great option for those interested in games, or those interested in heavy duty image or video editing.

With only 1GB of RAM and running Vista there is some considerable lag, especially when multitasking. You begin to see noticeable lag with 3 or more browsers open. It is important with this notebook to remove the majority if not all of the included trialware that comes preinstalled. Most of it is a waste, and it is unfortunate that Toshiba still does this. Also it doesn't appear that this Satellite accepts additional RAM, which is not good.

Connectivity

Integrated WiFi (to connect to wireless LANs)

1 Ethernet port (to connect to wired LANs)

4 2.0 USB 2.0 ports (use these ports to connect to things like your digital camera, printer, thumb drives etc.)

1 FireWire (for high speed data transfer between things like digital camcorders or other PC's)

1 VGA monitor output (this is the typical video output for a computer monitor)

1 S-Video out (for connecting to some TV's but usually projectors)

1 PCMCIA slot

1 audio out jack / 1 mic in jack

5 in 1 memory card reader (this is used to directly insert solid state memory cards from digital cameras etc into the laptop)

1 Modem port

The connectivity is rather standard. It is interesting to see a PCMICIA slot, which is an older style port. That indicates to me that this laptop may be a little antiquated. With a current cost of around $600 I would say that this isn't the best deal. It may be possible that this notebook sees a reduction in price soon, because it is based on older technology. The bottom line is that I found this notebook to be quite laggy even with rudimentary tasks. This means that this notebook would be a good work notebook or option for a student who would mostly be interested working and wouldn't need much in the way of multimedia.