The U505 family replaces the Satellite U405 in Toshiba’s laptop line. The understated design is appealing, and not only because it stands in stark contrast to the glossy shells worn by most other consumer laptops these days. The lid and the area surrounding the keyboard are covered in a textured finish (Toshiba calls the pattern “Matrix”) that looks and feels good. The chassis comes in dark brown (so dark it looks black), white, and pink, and unlike the competition, Toshiba PA3383U-1BRS Battery ,the case is blissfully impervious to fingerprints and smudges. At 4.7 pounds, the U505-S2930 is certainly light enough to carry as a near-constant companion, though we found its thickness—1.25 inches at the front and 1.5 inches at the rear—noticeably chunkier than the 1-inch-thick MacBook Pro and Studio XPS 13.
From petite netbooks to massive desktop replacements, laptops are made for different needs. Follow the tips in this buying guide, and you can meet the notebook of your dreams.
The mere mention of the phrase “desktop processor” means start looking at carrying cases with wheels, because this laptop is going to be heavy. The DRX is in essence a 12-pound refrigerator, built to cool a ferociously fast processor. Rarely does a gaming laptop cross the 10-pound barrier these days; the 9.4-pound Alienware M17 and the 8.9-pound Gateway P-7808u FX Edition seem like lightweights alongside the DRX. The design lacks inspiration, as the boxy plastic frame is absent of any curves, Gateway SQU-517 battery,metallic accents, or fashionable LEDs. The style of these particular frames is determined by their makers, Taiwanese manufacturers (Clevo or Compal, in this case) that sell them as bare-bones frames populated with parts purchased separately by these boutique vendors.
Falcon, however, does specialize in custom paint jobs: The DRX can be machine-painted with any color imaginable, reminiscent of how automobiles receive their paint jobs. You can also get a custom hand-painted design, depending on the request, for a hefty fee (anywhere from $400 to $600).
These days almost every laptop packs a DVD burner–and many of them offer LightScribe technology for inscribing images or labels on top of specially coated discs. For enjoying high-definition flicks, Toshiba PA3399U-1BRS Battery ,Blu-ray Disc is the format of choice. Most laptops come standard with a DVD-RW drive, but BD-ROM drives are slowly creeping into all-purpose laptops too. Of course, adding a BD-ROM drive often means tacking a few extra bucks onto the price tag.
Both ATI and Nvidia have multi-GPU solutions for notebooks that will, with two exceptions, only appear in massive desktop replacement units. ATI’s is called Crossfire; Nvidia’s is called SLI. Please note that these solutions typically don’t bring a linear performance improvement; two GeForce GTX 280Ms aren’t going to run twice as fast as one, Dell Inspiron 8000 Batteries,as latency and driver optimization come into play. With this technology, the aforementioned driver situation becomes more important … because if a game isn’t properly profiled by the vendor in question the game won’t reap the benefits of SLI or Crossfire.