Computer.co.uk

Just the other day I wrote about what a great notebook computer you can get for under £400, and just this morning I see that my Rss reader is going crazy with news about this high-powered new release in the Toshiba Satellite notebook line.

Now, you aren’t going to get this for under £400, but it does weigh in with a quite reasonable baseline price tag of £529.  Now, what does an extra £129 get you?  LOTS!

I have to be honest, quite a few of the features in this laptop make my geek radar go crazy.  From integrated Harmon Kardon speakers, to it’s uber-impressive 16″ Cinematic display.  You can’t go wrong with a Toshiba display, at any size.  I could stop there, but let’s talk about computing power.  Can this computer hang with the big dogs?

Well, yes and no.

The upper end models are pretty well equipped, and they can keep up with all but the most powerful laptops in the under £750 price range.  That’s not to say that the lower end (£529 model) can’t keep up, but I’d much rather see a uniform chip set rather than 4 different options.  All chipsets are adequate, and all have at least 2ghz processors.  Not bad for a budget laptop.

Now, when it comes to hard drive space, 320 gb is about the standard nowadays, so while it doesn’t exceed expectations, it certainly meets them.  Add in the 4gb of memory (for all models), and this notebook may just be the best (or at least one of them) in this price range.