Toshiba's Speedy Satellite Offers Multimedia Options Galore

In the Toshiba notebook family, the Satellite has always played the boxy relative to its sleek, powerful siblings, the Portege and Tecra.

But the newest Satellite in the 2800 series, the $2099 Satellite 2805, sheds its old image with a more attractive chassis that includes the coolest multimedia features we've seen in quite awhile. Fortunately this Satellite also provides enough performance and battery life to take advantage of all its multimedia extras.

A Swift Satellite

The 650-MHz Pentium III Satellite comes loaded with Microsoft Windows Me, 128MB of RAM, and a 10GB hard drive, and it includes Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0, Mediamatics DVDExpress, Norton AntiVirus 2000, Quicken Basic 2000, and a copy of Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition.

We found this Satellite to be quite fast: It scored 131 on our PC WorldBench 2000 tests. In comparison, the 650-MHz $2578 Gateway Solo 9300LS scored 119 on our WorldBench tests.

Additional features include a 56-kilobits-per-second modem and an integrated ethernet connection with two dedicated jacks (one for a modem and one for ethernet), plus a programmable button for launching your favorite Web browser. A useful mouse-button quartet beneath the keyboard allows right and left clicks as well as up and down scrolling. Toshiba's eraserhead pointing device sits amidst the fairly comfortable yet somewhat flimsy keyboard.

Of course, the case also offers the usual suspects: parallel and PS/2 ports, two Type II PC Card slots, one Type III PC Card slot, two USB ports, and headphone/microphone jacks. The only thing missing was a serial port.

At 12.9 by 10.9 by 1.7 inches (width by depth by height) and 8.5 pounds (with the AC adapter and included phone cord), the Satellite 2805 isn't svelte by any means. But you wouldn't expect it to be, since the notebook includes both an internal 8X DVD-ROM drive and a floppy drive, as well as a big and bright 14.1-inch thin-film transistor screen.

Multimedia to Go

The Satellite 2805's case dimensions allow plenty of room for excellent multimedia features. For starters, the 2805's power switch lets you power up the machine and load the media player of your choice in one smooth motion. Slide the switch to the right, and the system boots up and then launches Windows Media Player. If the Satellite detects a DVD movie disc in its drive, sliding the switch to the left will boot up the laptop and launch the DVDExpress player software.

You can play music CDs without booting up the notebook or even opening the case: If the disc is already loaded into the drive, just push the switch to the left to turn the player on (push it again to the left to turn it off later). The Satellite autodetects what kind of disc is being played. Four buttons on the rear hinge let you conveniently control disc play. Press a fifth Bass button, and the audio actually sounds good--putting the Satellite in the same league as the Compaq Presario 1800 and its sharp-sounding JBL Pro speakers. We also appreciate the convenient volume wheel on the system's side, although turning it up full blast distorts the sound. But because a strip of speakers sits both above the keyboard and on the system's front edge, keeping the lid closed means you won't hear the speakers' full volume.

Watching DVD movies requires a lot of processing power and lengthy battery life, but the Satellite has those bases covered. Its 185-minute battery life, according to our tests, will last well through Gladiator, although Acer's TravelMate 602TER offers an extra hour of battery life.

To top off the package, Toshiba offers a great documentation and support package. The company includes an extensive, comprehensible user manual, an expensive copy of Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition, and round-the-clock toll-free phone support--however, you get only a one-year warranty. But all told, this Satellite impressed us, as it will anyone seeking a superb multimedia machine.