Screen, bundle, warranty
Audio quality is surprisingly good, helped by the Dolby Sound Room processing and two Harman Kardon speakers that are on either side, and they provide a room-filling sound when set to maximum volume. The TruBrite screen, too, is above average, being bright and even across the panel.
Toshiba applies a smooth sheen over the keys which make them difficult to type really quickly upon, and, purely personally, the 'Enter' button needs to be bigger for a laptop with a full-size keyboard.
Setup and software
The setup procedure, from when first switched on, is an onerous, time-consuming affair. Windows Vista is loaded from an image and the whole process, until Vista becomes usable, is some 40 minutes. It's prudent to have the AC mains adapter plugged in at this time.
Toshiba also bundles in shortcuts to Amazon and eBay with the basic build; we're not fans of such 'helpful' bloatware.
The 250GB hard drive is split into two partitions, with the second containing a factory-fresh installation should matters go Pete Tong. It can be accessed by pressing F8 during POST and then reloaded on to the primary C: However, doing so means going through the irksome Vista-loading process again.
On a related note, Toshiba's documentation recommends that DVD-R copies be made of the image, which takes two discs. Note, however, that no recovery disc was bundled in to our sample.
Pre-loaded with a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office, Google Earth, a 30-day McAfee Internet Security Suite subscription and Tosh's TEMPRO software, the bundle is about average for the industry.
Warranty
As standard, the Satellite range ships with a one-year warranty that requires the purchaser to return it to a Toshiba-authorised dealer at their own cost should matters go awry.
The warranty can be upgraded, free, to a collect-and return service, where Toshiba foots the courier bill in both directions, by registering the laptop at an URL that's provided in the documentation.
It's a simple method of gaining extra user info, we suppose, and the benefit is enough to ensure that almost everyone takes advantage of it.
And here it is next to a standard 15.4in Satellite Pro model, shown on the right. Both have identical chassis but different finishes.
