WHAT'S HOT: Toshiba has upped the ante with this new addition to its Satellite 5205 series. This major refresh of the company's eye-catching multimedia notebook sports the same shiny blue lid, out-of-this-world sound, and high-resolution screen as before. But now, instead of a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive fixed in the case, it offers a modular bay equipped with a removable DVD-RW/-R drive for burning your own digital movies downloaded via the notebook's FireWire (IEEE 1394) port. The sleek, beveled case looks more streamlined than before, and Toshiba has thrown in a remote control for flipping between the notebook's 15-inch screen and a TV display. The volume wheel is bigger and has been moved to the front.

Gone is the desktop chip that made the first 5205 notebooks feel like hot potatoes after running for an hour; now the series is equipped with a mobile 2-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M processor. In our tests, 512MB of RAM helped the 5205-S703 grab a slightly higher PC WorldBench 4 score of 104, edging out most other P4 notebooks we've tested. Battery life is better than before, too. The 5205-S504 we tested last year pooped out after 1.7 hours; this new 5205-S703 lasted a little over 3 hours on one charge. If that doesn't give you enough time to edit your home movies out on the patio, the new modular bay can accommodate a second battery.

WHAT'S NOT: Unchanged in weight from its predecessor, the Satellite 5205-S703 is heavy for a one-bay notebook, at almost 9 pounds including the power adapter. Not surprisingly for a cutting-edge model, it's missing parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports, and a floppy drive costs extra.

WHAT ELSE: Striking looks and sound continue to be this wireless-ready notebook's hallmarks. When closed, the hard-plastic lid beckons like the shiny blue hood of a sports car. It's complemented by a blue lower casing, a silver-and-black audio panel studded with five brightly colored status lights, and a small LCD that shows the time, day of the week, and remaining battery life. A small set of Harman/Kardon stereo speakers backed by a subwoofer turn out beautiful audio with no distortion, even at high volume. The audio buttons and speakers remain exposed when you close the lid, so you can kick back and enjoy a CD even with the notebook shut down.

In addition to the new modular drive, Toshiba moved some connections and made some other changes to the case, mostly for the better. With the notebook's battery now forming the rear, most of the connections, including three USB 2.0 ports, are on the front and sides where they're easier to reach. The built-in SmartMedia card slot is gone, but Toshiba kept the built-in Secure Digital slot and now offers a three-in-one media reader for the modular bay that accommodates not only SmartMedia cards but CompactFlash cards and Memory Sticks, too. (The remaining bay option is a secondary 60GB hard drive. A weight-saving module comes with the notebook.) Internal parts are still fairly easy to access, though the panel covering the hard drive is now held in by two screws instead of one.

The 5205-S703's large keyboard is easy to type on and includes a couple of dedicated shortcut buttons for launching your favorite applications. The touchpad is where you'll find another unique feature in this notebook full of unusual extras: Using Synaptics' CPad software, the touchpad can double as a 240-by-160-pixel LCD that lets you execute Windows commands and launch programs. If you find the CPad too distracting, you can turn it off and use the touchpad solely as an input device.

Aside from a setup poster, there is no printed documentation. The software-based electronic manual was helpful and seemed complete; we couldn't find a way to view it full-screen, however.

UPSHOT: If the laptop of your dreams comes with off-the-charts sound, a DVD burner, and extra memory slots, consider ponying up the extra dollars for Toshiba's latest multimedia machine. You won't be disappointed.