Toshiba Satellite T135 Notebook - Great laptop for college
My dad purchased this laptop (Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325) for me for my birthday a few months ago because my other Toshiba Satellite laptop was pretty old (purchased in 2004) and was clearly showing its age (it was very, very slow). I wanted something lighter, smaller, and basic because I was mainly going to use it for general activities like Internet surfing, email, video-watching, music playing, and viewing photos. Nothing really processor-heavy (which is what my very fast desktop is for). Basically, I wanted something inbetween a normal laptop and a netbook. All in all, I'm quite satisfied with this laptop. It's small, very easy to carry around (I can't tell you how nice that is... my old Toshiba Satellite was a monster compared to this one... VERY heavy). This one is so light and small, which I love. It's so easy to carry it around campus. I like that it has a dual-core processor, too, and is much faster than a netbook. Windows 7 works great on it and the 4gb RAM is definitely a plus. The only aspects I'm not very satisifed with are the display and the sound. The sound, of course, is pretty much expected to be cruddy on laptops and netbooks. That's pretty much a given (just look at Consumer Reports... almost every laptop gets a half black-dot or "fair" rating for speaker quality), so it doesn't bother me too much. I just use earphones, which isn't so bad. The display I'm not very happy about because it's VERY bright and the whites are almost blinding. It's LED backlit, so that is probably the culprit. Even when I turn the brightness setting way down, the screen seems incredibly, overly bright to me. It really hurts my eyes after a while. I'm not sure if this is just how the display is supposed to be or if it's my particular unit. My old Toshiba laptop may have been quite old, but it had an amazing display. This one, I'm not so impressed with. However, I put up with it because this was a pretty affordable computer and I love the fact that it's way more portable than my old one. I just can't sit for really long periods of time in front of it. The keyboard is also a bit difficult to use because of the small keys, but I have small hands, so it's not a huge issue for me. I don't use the trackpad (I know some people mentioned it's awful and doesn't respond well), so I can't comment on that. I always use a mouse because it's just more user-friendly, in my opinion. Also, there is no CD/DVD drive, but this isn't a problem for me because I never use those anymore and having one would just make the computer heavier. In short, I really recommend this computer because it fits that niche between laptop and netbook. It's very portable, easy to use, and has very good processing power for all your basic tasks and more. It's great for travel and fits my needs a college student just fine.
dream-of-butterfly
Benicia, CA