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Toshiba Satellite A105-S361A reasonably priced multimedia performer with short battery life. Price:
$1,449
by John R. Delaney 
The new Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 delivers a generous helping of multimedia features at an affordable price. We wish we could squeeze another hour of life out of the battery, but if you’re looking for a powerful and fun system primarily for home or office use, you’ve come to the right place.
The A105’s Mist Gray lid gives way to a subtle curve toward the front of the notebook, as does the silver wrist rest on the inside, giving the system a nice tapered look. The responsive full-sized keyboard is neither stiff nor spongy, and the two-button touchpad mouse controller allows vertical and horizontal scrolling, but is slightly undersized. To the left of the keyboard are the Power button and CD/DVD player controls, including the Express Media Player button, which controls audio CDs and DVDs without having to start Windows. Weighing in at six pounds with a 14.2 x 10.5 x 1.2-inch frame, the A105 is a bit too bulky for long hauls. Headphone and microphone jacks are conveniently located on the front bezel, along with a volume control and a Bridge Media Adapter slot. The media reader accepts xD Picture cards, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, MMC, and SD memory cards. Four USB ports, a Firewire port, and an S-Video jack provide connectivity to a wide range of external devices. The ExpressCard/54 and PC Card slots round out the port array. Powered by Intel’s 2-GHz Pentium M processor 760 and 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM, the A105 scored an impressive 234 on our MobileMark 2005 performance tests, but its battery life of 2 hours and 12 minutes fell short of our expectations. You’re not going to take the A105 on the road very often, but we wish the system lasted a little longer unplugged for in-home use. A 3DMark03 score of 1,106 is about what you’d expect from a system that relies on an integrated graphics solution to drive video, so if gaming is high on your priority list, consider a machine with dedicated graphics. The A105 comes with Toshiba’s DVD SuperMulti drive, a dual-layer DVD burner that supports 11 media formats and boasts an 8X DVD+R/8X DVD-R write speed. The huge 5,400-rpm 120GB hard drive offers more than enough storage for multimedia files. DVDs look sharp on the A105’s 15.4-inch TruBrite WXGA (1280 x 800) widescreen display. The glossy screen coating makes for vivid colors, but it tends to reflect ambient light and can be distracting when viewed in a brightly lit environment. If you like to use your laptop as a music player, the A105 will satisfy. The Harman Kardon speakers embedded above the keyboard produce a surprisingly rich blend of high and medium tones with a better-than-average bass response. The Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG adapter showed admirable range, giving us throughput of 15.8 Mbps at 5 feet and 11.9 Mbps at 50 feet. Toshiba’s ConfigFree software makes establishing and changing Wi-Fi connections easy. Other bundled software includes InterVideo’s WinDVD5 and Creator 2 Platinum to get you creating and burning your own DVD projects, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Intuit Quicken New User Edition 2005, and trial versions of Microsoft’s Digital Image Suite Edition and Works 8.5. You also get Toshiba’s Custom Utilities, which include diagnostic and hotkey assignment tools, an audio settings tool, and an application zooming utility. Toshiba’s Satellite A105-S361 is a good choice if you want to create, edit, and store multimedia projects. The widescreen display and speaker system combine to provide a pleasurable DVD movie and music experience, but the poor battery life means you can’t wander too far from a power outlet. Compare Prices | Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 Specifications
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