Taking the Toshiba L505D Laptop for a Spin

I went out shopping a couple months ago for a new laptop. My father wanted a computer and my laptop at the time just wasn't cutting it anymore for me, so I would get a new one, he would get my old one. After weeks of hunting around trying to find something below #400 that wasn't a netbook and that had decent specs we stumbled upon the Toshiba L505D-LS5003. Took it home, plugged it in, and I was content.

The main draw for me getting the laptop was the copy of Windows 7 Home Edition that came with it, 64-bit as opposed to 32. And a current copy as opposed to my Windows 7 RC1 on my old laptop (which my father has since replaced). The laptop came with 3GB of memory, a 250 GB Hard drive, and an SD Reader on the front. It also came with an eSATA port which my more tech savvy friend assures me is the next evolution of portable storage interfaces, but I have had no use for it yet.

The first thing I did was upgrade the RAM to 4GB (the maximum for the motherboard). So far so good. Then I tried to run a 1980p movie I had downloaded and it was choppy as all heck. The RAM could take it, but the CPU was a bit taxed. It is an AMD Sempron M100 2.0 Ghz chip. I didn't know it when I bought the laptop but this is a single core CPU, and given it's speed and low cache I am not surprised it has problems with 1080p movies.

The other problem with the laptop is while the graphics card is a 42xx series Radeon HD, it is not powerful enough to even play a game like Left 4 Dead with minimal settings without serious glitches and bugs. The fact that Left 4 Dead is based on the Source engine, and engine that has amazing scalability (even running on my friends 3xxx graphics card) and it can't run on this one reliably says a lot for the stability of the laptop as a gaming platform. Low end games only need apply.

I realize now that I have been stating my problems with the laptop a lot, but before I get to the one thing that truly annoyed me with this laptop I should touch on what it does well. The laptop is great for watching SD movies up to 720p movies.

It handles the internet and office work perfectly, in fact the laptop has some awesome features built into the track pad that help immensely. The first is that your scroll-bars are mapped to the far right and bottom of the trackpad, just touch in the area and you are controlling the scroll-bar. The second great feature is the zoom function. If you place two fingers on the touchpad and move them apart or closer together you will zoom in and out.

The last great feature is one that seems to be used in a lot of Toshiba laptops, that is a little utility called ConfigFree. It is one of the Desktop Gadgets included in the laptop and it allows easy connection to Wi-Fi hotspots, showing them up in a little radar screen, showing you strength and everything. The reason I bring this up though is it will connect to a network that you otherwise might not be able to such as an AOSS network. You will have to enter passwords and such, but overall a very handy utility.

Now on to my biggest problem with the laptop. If you want to use the laptop for internet and movies and lighter games in Windows 7 you are good to go and the laptop is a great buy.. If you want to install Linux on the laptop though it's a no-go. Computers these days have something called ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface). This controls many things like the throttling of the CPU speed, fan speeds, and allows the computer to monitor internal temperatures among other tasks. Toshiba have used a very odd BIOS in this laptop that basically makes it impossible to use Linux on the laptop without turning off ACPI, which could be hazardous to your laptops health. There are ways around it such as patching your own kernel, but if you know how to do that you aren't reading laptop reviews online probably.

After all is said and done though most people who are buying a laptop just want it to work out of the box. Toshiba has a great reputation for solid electronics, and the laptop is a great buy unless you are going to be watching 1080p movies on it or putting another OS on it. In the end most users aren't going to be doing either of those, bot for those of you that want to, seek other alternatives.