Save energy with Toshiba’s E205 Laptop

Good: Bright, energy saving; HDTV wireless transmission.

Bad: Mouse pad is stiff and plastic frame is little bad.

Intermediate: Not suitable for every user.

What does Reader’s say:-

Toshiba recently introduced E205-S1904 Satellite laptop into the market. Costs, $999 laptop with good performance and can project signal beam to HDTV, but has many mechanical problems which don’t make it the ultimate product according to many users.

Toshiba designed the E205 for the sake of Best Buy's "Blue Label" program. In this the computer has made as per the easy usage of any user. Different comments passed for the product: The laptop's royal blue, molded-plastic case feels cheap, compared to other Toshiba models. Touching it makes it look your fingerprints; this is due to its glossy look.

The E205 features a repulsive keyboard and big touchpad, left and right mouse buttons are very hard to reach.

Glossy look

On the left side, there are jacks for a headphone and microphone, as well as a USB input, heat-dissipation vents are at the instead of the bottom. The E205's right side includes a slot-loading DVD player, a conventional USB port, and another USB input that accepts eSata cable, too. There's also an HD multimedia (HDMI) output.

how to project IMAGE DISPLAY ON TV

There’s an ambient-light sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness settings on the energy-saving, 14.1-inch, HD-resolution, LED-backlit screen. To the right of the keyboard, there's a touch-control panel to adjust the volume and playback of music and videos. The keyboard is nicely backlit as well, which helps in low-light situations.

Toshiba is one of the first PC makers to use a new Intel (INTC) technology called Wireless Display, or WiDi. It creates a wireless network that pairs the laptop with a Netgear (NTGR) Push2TV receiver that's included with the computer's purchase. This lets users easily display images from the E205 on a big-screen TV. Once the connection is established, it takes just a button push in Intel's Wireless Display software to initiate the transfer.

There are a couple of drawbacks. The technology doesn't currently work with copy-protected DVDs. And the laptop's display is disabled during the transfer, so users can't do something else on the laptop—such as deal with e-mail—while watching videos or listening to music.

Showing Back Ports

Overall performance was intermediate. The laptop runs on Intel's new Core i5 processor and includes a generous 4 gigabytes of memory, which can be expanded up to 8 GB. The 500-GB hard drive is generous for a laptop in the E205's price range. Battery life is a fairly typical 3.5 hours when running video at normal screen brightness.

SOME GRAPHICS CHIPS are not latest

It has 64-bit version of Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows 7 Home Premium operating system, which processes data in larger chunks than the 32-bit version. The E205 had no problems running multiple programs simultaneously. It worked without a hitch when I played video and listened to music at the same time, using Apple's (AAPL) iTunes software.

Intel's integrated graphics chip always seems to need a few seconds to work out the kinks when playing video, and this system was no different. An odd quirk of the E205 and other WiDi-equipped laptops is that users can't easily add more potent graphics chips from Nvidia (NVDA) or ATI (AMD). That could limit the machine's appeal for video game players. Intel executives say PC makers can create software that would let them add other graphics chips to their machines.

The E205 comes with a trial version of Microsoft Office and Works and Symantec's (SYMC) Norton Internet Security. There's also Best Buy's Software Installer application, which contains a list of programs and Web sites—including Netflix (NFLX), Roxio Creator (SNIC), and The Wall Street Journal (NWS)—that can quickly be installed. It's a neat way to shop for software to personalize your computer without being hobbled by preinstalled clutter you don't want.

The Toshiba E205's design may not work for everyone, but it's a powerful and affordable laptop whose innovation and ease of use packs are good.