Toshiba Satellite 5200
Toshiba clearly took us seriously when we said we wanted dream machines. The Satellite 5200 comes with one piece of kit that both raises the RRP and the pulses of most techies simultaneously -- an integrated DVD Burner. The burner in question is of the -R variety, with the option to also record to DVD-RAM and do the usual CD-RW relating writing as well.
We've always liked the keyboards on Toshiba notebooks; they generally have excellent travel and responsiveness, even without the Windows key in the correct place. The Satellite 5200 also integrates Toshiba's cPad technology, which places an LCD under the touchpad. cPad can be used for a variety of functions; it's essentially a software programmable LCD. Our only complaint with the pad was that we tended to brush it when typing, which sent our onscreen cursor into a frenzy of movement. It's not an insurmountable problem, though, especially given that most machines of this size tend to end up with mice tethered to them.
The 5200 topped out the specifications race for those systems with a mobile processor; it ran equal to the Fujitsu Lifebook in processor (2.2GHz P4-M), memory (512MB) and hard drive capacity (60GB). It pulled ahead with a 15" screen and a very tasty 64MB nVidia GeForce 4 460 Go graphics solution. With that kind of grunt, we were expecting great things from the 5200 in performance terms, but were exceptionally nervous on the battery front. It's not as though running that much gear on that large a screen wasn't going to come without a price to pay, after all.
As we expected, the 5200 topped out our MobileMark 2002 performance rankings. What we didn't expect was that it would top out our performance and reader battery rankings as well, nudging just short of two hours in performance mode, and well clear of that figure in reader testing.
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Power trip: Four high-end notebooks tested Introduction 1. Acer Travelmate 426LC 2. Fujitsu Lifebook E7010 3. IBM Thinkpad T30 4. Toshiba Satellite 5200 Benchmark results Specifications |
The Satellite 5200 is a solid bit of consumer technology with all the bells and whistles you could possibly want at this point in time. It's not cheap, but then it's more than adequately compensated for with a comprehensive bundle of extras.
Toshiba Satellite 5200
Company:
Price: AU$6499
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 021 100
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