Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025

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I got a new laptop this past Friday at Best Buy. Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025 a new in 2010 model. We went to BB about a week ago and talked with a guy there and based on what I need, a machine to be able to work with pictures, graphics, video, which will be my interim machine until I can get a big desktop machine built to work with video …

We talked about different models and the point of the Satellite model I got was it had a separate dedicated graphics card, unlike what all the HP’s we’ve gotten over the last few or more years have. Also the size was interesting. I don’t particularly like too big, I don’t like mid-size more though. I had a 17″ laptop long ago. It was nearly too big. I then had a 15.4″ laptop and it was OK, but I longed for a smaller laptop, and eventually got a 12.1″ touchscreen laptop. That’s the one I’m now upgrading from. Not because it’s worn out, not because I don’t like it anymore, but because hubby needs a better computer for work and I could use a more powerful one with the things I do, and that HP tx2500 is powerful enough for the kind of graphics he’ll be downloading and using, but it’s hard to use for processing my Sony Handycam HD video & such things.

I started writing this post, the above two paragraphs, the day after purchasing the laptop. I do like it. I don’t like it. Main points of it are:

Pro:

  • Big Screen, online videos look great.
  • DVD’s played in Toshiba’s DVD player look fantastic (also has “upconvert” feature on/off controllable)
  • Win 7 boots fast
  • Less bloatware than HP’s I’ve had in the past
  • 12-cell battery is excellent, props computer up in back nicely for incline. Holds power well. I unplugged this computer, for instance last evening, worked on it a little, brought it upstairs and didn’t plug it in, shut the lid (which is set to do nothing.) Brought it downstairs at 5:50am and it’s been on since, and at 43% now, which is 10:13am.
  • Dedicated Graphics memory nVidia GeForce 310m …

Con:

  • Dedicated Graphics memory nVidia GeForce 310m ( it’s a pro and a con, because it’s the least of it’s category & also doesn’t allow for nVidia 3D to work if I wanted to purchase stuff.
  • The graphics driver is also less powerful than the sales guy led me to believe, but that’s not entirely his fault. It is though since he never tried to upsell any ideas of higher power graphics, driven laptops. Only thing he did was point out the i3 core vs. i7 core … there was one Toshiba that was i7, power ratings dropped drastically because of i7, and so the i3 looked better, everything else being the same, for a hundred dollars more. No laptop I’ve looked at since online with a better graphics driver was what I wanted, something was off or wrong about every one except for the variety that were $2000+
  • Graphics display resolution is too wrong. 1366×768 is what many things are from what I saw online, but it’s too weird for my liking. Too big. I want smaller, something bigger/smaller … you know how graphics resolutions, the bigger the number the smaller the picture, so 1366 is great, but 768 is not. There are no other good choices either.

I was thinking about returning it (would have to restore it to factory first) but then after a little looking online just realized there was no way I could afford a better laptop, and I need to put any $ like that into building a new power desktop for my video and graphics work.

All in all this computer IS more powerful than my HP tx2513cl, which I gave to my husband, which is an upgrade from my oldest laptop around here, HP5000 series from quite a few years ago.

I moved my stuff off of the tx2513cl onto this laptop, and then clean-installed Windows 7 Professional upgrade onto that HP, which had been running Vista Home Premium (yuck!) I wanted to upgrade it for me since October, but couldn’t convince my hubby to do it. Eventually he agreed to get me a new laptop & upgrade that one to Win 7 for him. OK, better deal in some ways. I don’t have touchscreen, panel swivel, etc. anymore. It was a nice size, small, light. But I do like larger monitors, I do have an Intuit 4 wacom tablet that I can use but just haven’t used it except for once before.

So I just decided for all the reasons stated and not stated that it was best to just keep this laptop and fill it up for use.

I shrank the C: drive and partitioned a second area for my stuff to reside alone (I prefer to have it separated so it doesn’t all blend in, and then I remember to keep everything separate when it matters & wouldn’t have thought of where it would go otherwise) I then installed Fedora 12 64-bit in the rest of the free space. It’s running OK. I actually like Windows a lot more now that I have Win 7 Pro 64-bit. It’s fast, overall, clean, easy to search and doesn’t seem to be working hard ever, when I’m just browsing the web or something easy, like my tx2513cl running Vista did.

This computer has a 16″ screen, it’s big. It does fit into my samsonite soft leather bag, not into the protected area, but fits with squeezing. I need to get a neoprene fitted sleeve then, which will make that easier. The times when I do travel with a computer I’ll have to just load less in the bag, which will probably make it lighter since I have tended to load it up with other devices and books and it got much heavier than my husbands bag (same kind) So a heavier computer that’s bigger will aide me in loading less into it. That’s good.




One response to “Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025”

  1. Muhammad Fayed Avatar
    Muhammad Fayed

    Thanks for this great review

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