Hands on: Toshiba Satellite 5005-S507 By Andrew P. McGuirk May 10, 2002 Summary What is it: World Class Gamers Laptop Why Do I Care: Real power in a portable form How Much: $1,899 (after rebates) Where Do I Get One: Any computer retailer It was with great anticipation that I cracked the seal on my newest toy dying to see if it lived up to the promise of its specs. Did it? The short answer is yes. This is the first laptop I have found that I wouldn't mind bringing to a LAN party. The spec highlights are: GHz PIII 512 Meg Ram 15.1" XVGA (Native 1600x1200 100hz) 40 Gigabyte HD Built-in HK Speakers NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive 10/100 Ethernet Built In There are a number of reviews with the details about the S507's frame rate in Q3 or Winbench numbers. I'll leave the sites with the budget for a test lab with a controlled environment to run those tests. Like always I want to talk about my real life experiences with the hardware I review. What Impressed Me The S507 is a dream to look at. Toshiba went out of their way to set it apart from the rest of the heard. The outer case is a dark metallic blue and the keyboard and track pad are black. The design is classy and it always turns heads when I pull it out. The screen is the best laptop screen I have ever worked with; it is so easy to work with it has replaced my desktop at the office as my main computer. It ships with Windows XP Home Edition. So far I have not experienced any of the glitches that XP can bring to a system. It seems a system designed to run XP really does bring out the power of XP. I have played Quake 3, Dark Age of Camelot, Freedom Force, and a number of other games with good results. The GeForce4 440 Go is for all intents and purposes a GeForce MX card with power management functions. In Q3 and DAOC there is the occasional frame rate drop but I would call it cosmetic rather than problematic, that is to say it didn't hurt my game play. I have run both game is 1600x1200 for extended durations but decided on 1280x1024 as my "playable" resolution. The sound is also very good, well at least the speakers are very good. The sound card is passable but can't hold a candle to any modern gaming sound card. There is no support for EAX or for A3D surround so you are limited to simple stereo. Having said that, for what it is the sound is quite good. Watching a DVD or listening to music through the speakers is not the painful experience that most laptops deliver. The DVD/CD-RW Combo drive works well but is limited to 8x record speeds. Once again while that is a bit slow for my tastes, it does support have Buffer Under Run protection and I was able to flawlessly burn in the background while playing games. Toshiba included Bluetooth drivers. While I have not had the chance to use them I was glad to see that the S507 was ready for it. What I didn't like One the Love/Hate side of things the S507 has no legacy ports of any kind, only 3 USB ports (one of which is needed for the USB Floppy drive if connected). This makes it difficult to "dock" the laptop for use as a desktop replacement. The purchase of a USB hub and a USB keyboard and mouse solved the majority of the problems and since the screen is so good and almost everything you might need is already built in it is not a huge drawback. It just surprised me that most of my existing equipment would need adaptors in order to be compatible. The battery lasts for about an hour. I have a WiFi card that I use with the laptop and that might be a contributor to the short life and of course I can turn down the backlight, slow the processor, etc. but at that point is only good for Word and Excel. I was hoping for better. I can get in a quick game session on the back porch, but if I intend to spend much time playing I need to find a power outlet. The rest of my dislikes are common to most laptops, slow hard disk access, smaller keyboard, etc. In all fairness the S507 is better than most. Final Thoughts Toshiba promotes the Satellite line as desktop replacements and for most business purposes that would be an accurate assessment. As a gaming solution it isn't the best game computer I have ever used but it is the second best gaming system I own and more game ready than many of my friends "main" gaming rigs. As I said before, I wouldn't think twice about bringing the S507 to a LAN party; it can hold it's own. Detailed Specifications Available Here (http://www.csd.toshiba.com) Have comments on this article? Send an email to feedback@cheatsearch.com! Some feedback may be posted right here. Be sure to include the name of the article with your comments (so we know what you are talking about).