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Toshiba Satellite A135-S4499Toshiba holds back the Satellite A135-S4499 with mediocre components. Price:
$1,499
By Jamie Bsales 
There's a lot to like about the Toshiba Satellite A135-S4499 ($1,499). It looks great, comes with dual 120GB hard drives (loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate) and 2GB of RAM, and sports a slick Synaptics touchpad that moves the cursor and does a whole lot more. Unfortunately, it needs a faster processor and graphics to make it really shine.
The 6.2-pound A135-S4499 comes wrapped in a stylish onyx-blue metallic chassis. The full-sized keyboard is particularly quiet and comfortable, and the 15.4-inch glossy widescreen is a joy to view. Crisp, clear, and bright, the display is equally adept at displaying text and movies in rich detail. Complementing the gorgeous view are deck-mounted stereo speakers that, unlike others in this class, deliver good sound and plenty of volume. The tricked-out touchpad might seem like a gimmick at first, with its electric-blue backlighting that reveals a host of touch-sensitive areas for various commands, but once you start using it, it does save time. Tap the activation area twice and you'll have one-touch access to your e-mail program, Wi-Fi utility, print command, and three other customizable applications. When activated, the touchpad's vertical scroll area becomes a touch-sensitive volume slider. These features, in addition to the dedicated multimedia-control buttons to the left of the keyboard, give the A135-S4499 more direct-access launch keys than any notebook we've seen--and without cluttering the keyboard deck with a dozen buttons. To deactivate and return to touchpad mode, tap the activation area once. It's easy to inadvertently double-tap and activate the special buttons when you don't want to, so a little practice is in order. One feature that's too clever for its own good is the Wi-Fi utility. A "radar" screen pops up to show you networks in range, which are arranged in a concentric circle based on signal strength. Slick. But connecting to a given network is not intuitive. We tried left-clicking, right-clicking, double-clicking, clicking and dragging, and even (heaven forbid!) reading the PDF manual, all to no avail. The secret: Click on the AP or network you want to connect to, then drag to draw a line from it to the laptop icon in the center. That annoyance aside, you won't be disappointed by the Windows Vista Ultimate operating system, which delivers all the features of the new OS, not just a given subset. Also of note for a mainstream model are the fingerprint reader and the dual 120GB hard drives; the latter is usually reserved for high-end gaming notebooks. The system's 240GB of storage makes it an ideal entertainment PC, especially if you add a USB TV tuner to take advantage of Windows Media Center's recording capabilities. Alas, Toshiba stopped just short of making the A135-S4499 really stand out by hobbling it with middle-of-the-road processing power. The 1.66-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 processor and Intel GMA 950 graphics are adequate for typical computing chores, but they're slow compared with other mainstream models in the same price range. The A135-S499's PCMark05 score of 3,220 is just okay, and its F.E.A.R. score of 37 fps (at 640 x 480-pixel resolution) and a Windows Experience Index graphics subscore of 3.1 show that this system can just barely handle 3D and Vista Aero tasks. That said, a faster CPU and GPU would push the price of the A135-S4499 beyond what most mainstream buyers are willing to pay, and day-to-day performance was perfectly adequate. You might, however, notice the weak wireless throughput of 5.2 Mbps at 50 feet in your daily routine, as well as the mediocre battery life of 1 hour and 47 minutes. Because of its sleek design, hardware extras, and good display and sound, we recommend the Toshiba Satellite A135-S4499. It's just not the best mainstream machine of the money. Suggested Stories: HP Pavilion dv9000z Review Junk your old desktop and replace it with this big screen multimedia notebook. Top Ten Notebook Add-ons The ultimate accessories for your portable, whether you're at home or on the road. Dual Core Notebooks Under $1,000 Everyone's abuzz about the power of dual-core processors and the slick new features of Windows Vista. And these six notebooks prove you can get both for less than a grand. Compare Prices | Toshiba Satellite A135-S4499 Specifications
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