WHAT'S HOT: Do you like your notebooks with sleek looks, fast ports, and blow-the-doors-off sound? The Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607 has what you crave. The Satellite's striking design features a blue lower casing and a silver-and-black audio panel on the front studded with five brightly colored status lights and a small status LCD that shows the time, day of the week, and remaining battery life. A deep-blue, hard-plastic lid--reminiscent of the polished hood of a sports car--tops off the look.

Under the hood, the 5105-S607 has a lot going on for multimedia enthusiasts. You get a TV-out port for watching DVD movies on a big screen, a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port for connecting digital camcorders and high-speed external hard drives, and a trio of USB 1.1 ports. Stacked on the left side of the case are Secure Digital and SmartMedia card slots for speedy photo import from digital cameras. The Satellite 5105-S607 excels as a CD player, with loud, clean, robust stereo sound, thanks to a built-in set of Harman/Kardon speakers backed by a subwoofer. The speakers (which jut from the back corners of the keyboard) and the front audio controls remain exposed when you close the lid, so you can kick back and enjoy a CD whether the notebook is turned on or shut down. A thumbwheel beneath the fixed DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive on the right side controls volume. And the GeForce4 440 Go graphics chip provides plenty of graphics processing power.

Part of the Satellite's appeal is the way it scatters connections all over the case in unconventional pairings, each set under its own protective cover. For instance, one of the USB ports and the monitor connection sit under a door on the left side, while the FireWire port shares a cover on the back with the modem and network jacks. Only one location, the headphones jack far back on the right side, is inconvenient.

WHAT'S NOT: The 5105-S607 turned in a disappointing battery life of 1.5 hours. The optical drive is fixed, so you can't have two batteries installed; you'll have to shut down and swap batteries if you want to keep working. And this large notebook (verging on 9 pounds, including an external floppy drive and a power adapter) seems like it could have squeezed in a parallel port.

WHAT ELSE: The 5105-S607's touchpad doubles as a 240-by-160-pixel LCD complete with programmable icons. The display shows a tappable shortcut in each corner of the touchpad for maximizing and minimizing windows on the main screen, launching Windows' Start menu, and dropping down the current application's main menu. It also displays vertical and horizontal scroll bars as reminders of where to run your finger. Pressing the scroll button between the two mouse buttons brings up a map of the touchpad on the main screen, where you can add your own shortcuts to any application you choose. If you find all this extra action too distracting, you can turn off the mini display and use the touchpad as you would any regular one.

The 5105-S607's hard drive is easily removable for swapping or off-site storage. The RAM is easy to access too, but to upgrade beyond 512MB you'll have to swap out one of the memory modules because in the 512MB version of this notebook, both sockets arrive full. You don't get much in the way of printed manuals, but the on-screen documentation is complete and easy to use. With a 1.7-GHz P4-M processor, the Satellite 5105-S607 performed adequately in our speed tests, earning a PC WorldBench 4 score of 98.

The 5105-S607's case is slightly thicker at the hinges than at the front, resulting in a slight tilt backward. The large keyboard is comfortable and full of surprises: For one, you can use the included Fn-ness utility to turn almost any key on the notebook into a function-key shortcut for launching your favorite Web site, application, or file. Including two dedicated buttons above the keyboard, you can set up 34 shortcuts.

UPSHOT: The Satellite 5105-S607 is the notebook equivalent of the supermodel who turns out to have brains, ambition, and a great singing voice to boot. And at $2499, it's very well priced considering the features it offers. However, its awful 1.5 hours of battery life may limit the appeal of this particular unit.

SUMMARY

Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607 PC WorldBench 4 score of 98, 1.7-GHz/1.2-GHz Pentium 4-M CPU, 512MB of DDR-266 SDRAM, 512KB L2 cache, Windows XP Home, 15-inch active-matrix screen, NVidia Geforce4 440 Go graphics chip with 32MB of DDR SDRAM, 40GB hard drive, 8X DVD-ROM and 8X/8X/24X CD-RW combination drive, built-in V.90 modem and network adapter, touchpad pointing device, 8.9 pounds (including AC adapter, floppy drive, and phone cord). One-year parts and labor warranty, free unlimited 24-hour daily toll-free tech support. $2499 800/867-4422 www.csd.toshiba.com