![[image%255B23%255D.png]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Roisi5a1oTg/TxM__6-7vKI/AAAAAAAAF54/oCrDUb_Qq-4/s1600/image%25255B23%25255D.png)
Toshiba’s Satellite L775 Notebook PC is a great bang for the buck, so much so that I bought it myself. I’ve avoided laptops for, well, forever, because for whatever laptop you could buy, you could by much more computing power in a desktop for the same money. I’m a tech junkie and spend too much time browsing around stores like BestBuy. Every time I’m there, I examine the notebooks and every time I’m sorely disappointed at the high prices and lack of power. I’ve never found anything worth using under $800 or so.
Click here to follow me on Google+.
Follow me on Twitter @CSharpner.
Finally, after years and years of browsing through the laptop aisle, I finally found a laptop with enough power and a low enough price, and, this one’s radically important for me, a high enough resolution (vertically) for me to personally get some programming done.
[Here’s my affiliate link to this notebook on Amazon]
So, let’s get into this PC’s specs:
| Feature |
Value |
| Screen Resolution |
1920×1080 |
| Screen Size |
17.3″ |
| Screen Aspect Ratio |
16:9 Wide Screen |
| RAM |
4GB DDR3 1333Mhz |
| CPU |
Intel Core i3-2330Mhz CPU, 2.20Ghz |
| Hard Drive |
500GB |
| Mouse |
Touch Pad w/ Multi-Touch |
| Keyboard |
Full keyboard with full number keypad. |
| Ports |
3 2.0 USB, 1 HDMI, 1 RJ11, 1 VGA, Power, Media Card reader |
| Optical Storage |
DVD +/-R/RW with LightScribe (The drive can print images on the label of your DVDs if you buy the right kind). |
What’s Good about it?
The price vs. performance is the best I’ve found – ever. With all of the specs above, I was able to get it for under $500. And, all other notebooks I ran across with a vertical resolution over 1024 were nearly $1,000 or more. With 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HD and a Dual Core processor, it’s plenty powerful enough for most anything I’d need for a computer on the go. All I really needed was something with a decent screen size to remote control my home desktop, so power and hard drive space weren’t really all that important for me, but this one’s got enough to use it as an actual computer as opposed to just a remote terminal.
I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the touch pad is a multi-touch pad. Yes, you can pinch to zoom. It has built in wireless networking (as should be expected by any modern laptop) and a full size, wide keyboard.
What’s NOT to like about it?
It gets HOT…. REALLY HOT! If you put it on your lap, you left leg will burn. You’ll get actual flesh burns. Also, and I find this unacceptable (aside from the low price); where you rest your right palm while typing gets really hot too… hot enough to cause bodily damage. They actually have warnings about these 2 hot spots.
The volume is pretty low. You’ll have to turn it up to max for most things to hear it. And, even though I mentioned the full size of the keyboard and the large screen as an advantage, it makes the whole unit pretty big… a little too big for a notebook, but if a compact size isn’t an issue for you, then this won’t be a problem. It fits nicely in my notebook backpack.
Installed Software
It comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium. They are also guilty of shoveling on lots of other software. Here’s a list of some of it:
- WildCoins games. Lots of fairly decent games, including Pac-Man (you can NEVER go wrong with Pac-Man!)
But, you’re given a handful of virtual coins and can play the games with your virtual coins, but when they’re used up, you’ll have to purchase the games(s) you want. Also, if you run the game launcher, it’ll install an icon on your desktop EVERY TIME YOU RUN IT! I like to keep my desktop slim on icons and this stupid thing keeps adding an icon on my desktop, against my will, without asking, without warning. Shame on you WildCoins! And shame on youToshiba for lowering your standards to allow this.
- Corel LabelOnce – This app let’s you design labels to print directly onto your CDs and DVDs (if you buy the write kind of discs made for this).
- Google Chrome
- NetZero dial up software? Really? What centuryis this???
- Skype – Not something I’d install for myself and easy enough to download if you want it.
- Toshiba utilities – Lots of Toshiba specific utilities, including making your own rebuild media discs. This is inexcusable to NOT provide the Windows Media discs. It would cost Toshiba maybe $1. But since they didn’t it will cost YOU many hours of babysitting the computer while you’re burning DVDs, making many trashed “coasters” in the process.
- Microsoft Office 2010 – Don’t get too excited… The filesare there, but if you don’t have an install key, you can’t use it.
- There was some anti-virus demo app on it too… either McAfee or Norton… don’t know, don’t care. I uninstalled it and installed Microsoft’s free “Security Essentials”.
Battery Life
Of course, no mobile device review is complete without talking about battery life. Toshiba has pre-installed some software to maximize and monitor your battery and your enabled features. It will dim your screen, slow down the CPU, stop spinning the hard drive, etc… to reduce power consumption. It’ll even give you a score of green leaves (a little annoying if you’re not a tree hugger), and a real time graph showing power usage so you can tune things to get a good balance of performance vs. battery usage.
Conclusion
I’ll end this review where I started it. This is the best value vs. performance notebook I’ve ever seen… so much so that I bought it… I’m even writing this review with it. Let’s put it this way, on a 5 star scale, ALL prior notebooks I’ve run across would never score more than 2.5 because of the ridiculously high prices and unusable low screen resolutions. This is the first one I give a higher score to. I’ll give it 4 stars out of 5. If it weren’t for the painful heating and lack of install media, I’d give it a full 5 stars.
[Here’s my affiliate link again to this notebook on Amazon] (I don’t provide affiliate links to products I don’t use myself or that I don’t want myself. This is one I definitely use myself).
See these images?
You’ll find an actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.
Check back later for updates too!
Click here to follow me on Google+.
Follow me on Twitter @CSharpner.
[poll id=”6″]
