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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Nearly Perfect Notebook"
Pros: Excellent set of features, superb price
Cons: preloaded with junk software
Summary: I recently purchased a Toshiba M55-S325 for medical school for $1200 (after a $200 rebate) at Office Depot. Between its 100GB HDD, dual layer DVD burner, 1.73Ghz Pentium M, 512mb PC333, and 14" 1280x768 widescreen, this notebook was an unbeatable value at that price, and is quite light at only 5lbs. I also priced Dells, and to have gotten something similar would have easily been $400+ more. Mine even came with a green outer casing (green just happens to be my favorite color), altough I believe several colors are offered. Thankfully the 512mb DDR333 is a single module, and there's an easily accessible outer slot which makes upgrading to 1GB a snap. For $45 at Newegg, I purchased a second 512mb module and was up to 1GB. I'd actually recommend anyone looking at a notebook stick with the bare minimum ram offered and shop around for the memory on their own. It's a good way to save up to several hundred dollars on the cost of the notebook, as most manufacturers significantly overcharge. So basically for $1245, I had the equivalent of a $1600-1700 notebook.
My only real complaint is that comes preloaded with a great deal of junk software, only has XP Home, and Toshiba only offers a recovery disk as opposed to a real copy of XP. I realize this is standard operating procedure with many companies now, but it's still irritating. I wouldn't get too worked up about software though, as software is something that can easily be replaced/upgraded at any time. I'll probably get a real copy of XP pro at some point and install it. Gamers might want to look elsewhere. I find very little appeal in gaming on a notebook myself aside from strategy games; FPS gaming in particular really blows chunks on a laptop in comparison to desktop IMHO, and something like a GF6800go adds a lot of weight, jacks up the price, drains battery life, and generates a great deal of heat. In any event, this has an integrated intel GMA900 chip, which shares system memory and is pretty blah unless you only plan to play older or less intensive games, or don't play games at all. Even something super cheap and crappy like an X300 would be better. Still, I didn't buy this notebook to play games as I already have a great desktop and consoles for that purpose, and will likely no longer have time in grad school. I bought it to get work done, and it should work nicely for that purpose. Ultimately, this laptop has got it where it counts (the hardware is great), and the price is right. It's nearly perfect.Updated
I neglected to mention the H/K speakers. They sound quite good for notebook speakers, and aren't the typical tin-foily sounding crap usually found on notebooks. It also comes with four USB ports, which is quite generous, and will probably mean you'll never have a need for a USB hub.
