1st Laptop!

[Techno_Savage]

I've been forced to work in a crummy job with a lot of downtime and have decided to look into purchasing a laptop to take advantage of the wifi and help pass time, through some help of a coworker I've set my sights on a $800 Toshiba from newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834214044 and would like some feed back!
one of my roommates has noted the 5400rpm hard drive but I was thinking of looking for a smaller SSD later on (500gb is more than I'd need) and I have the option to upgrade to 8g ram if I ever needed too.
I guess I'm just looking for some feedback from those far more computer literate than I on making sure this is a good purchase and see if anyone has managed to find a better deal.

[Twigsoffury]

looks great to me, it has a dedicated graphics card, while not the highest end it'll certainly play todays games with decent frame rates.

don't jip over the 5,400rpm drive, there isn't that big of a difference between 7,200rpm and 5,400rpm. you really want to pay attention to the amount of cache the hard drive has (anywhere from 16MB upto 64MB, more the better)

i'd buy it if you cant comb around and find something with even better specs for the same price.

[TheGreatSatan]

How good is that video card?

[farlo]

that mobility radeon should be pretti good, heres a nice benchmark chart: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mob...0.23697.0.html

[DrkSide]

That toshiba looks like a good deal. The 5650 should do rather nicely. I have a dell with a 4650 in it and it will play most of what I throw at it. I think the newest game that I played on it was MW2, and then I got my desktop.

The SSD would be a better upgrade than adding 4GB of ram depending on what you do. My laptop has a Core i7 420? i think but my AMD 555 dual core runs laps around it at everyday tasks. The big difference being the ssd. YMMV

[TheGreatSatan]

Yep, nevermind. My wife's lappy has a 5400 and it's quite capable

[x88x]

Looks pretty good to me. My only complaints would be the display resolution and the strange keyboard layouts that Toshiba seems to be so fond of using. The HDD will be slower than a 7200RPM drive, but if you're just using it for normal, everyday stuff and some light gaming, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Techno_Savage]

Purchased it today with help from the GF, after drawing up some contracts and speaking to her lawyers I am indebted to her for all eternity... but at least I got a nifty laptop! ^_^

P.S. don't tell her but I already sold my soul to Satan for a delicious fruitcake, ah to be young and naive!

[x88x]

I am indebted to her for all eternity...

I feel like that happened a while ago, eh?

[Konrad]

Toshiba Satellites are built by Quanta. They tend to have really solid build quality (and can survive a couple of drops) but all the add-on "offboard" tech features (camera, wlan, bt, card slots) tend to require very finicky Windows drivers. I'm not fond of the Chicony keyboard layouts, personally, but you gotta make compromises when you pack a notebook. Pricing tends to be definitely average.