A visual look
The Satellite Pro does without all the mock-carbon-fibre finish and 'go-faster' stripes found on the non-Pro. Its boring, sombre, grey aesthetic fitting in well to the intended use as a workhorse business machine.
A multicard reader, audio ports, and volume wheel are located just below the lid.
Initial impressions are of an overly-plastic finish.
Turn it to the left-hand side and two USB2.0 ports, including one that doubles-up as eSATA, are next to the RJ45 for the Gigabit LAN and just below the ExpressCard's slot.
S-Video and VGA outputs are the same as the Satellite's, although we're missing the HDMI port here.
The optical drive has been changed to a different manufacturer - from Pioneer to Hitachi - but this may just be a stock-control issue rather than anything more serious. A knock-on effect is that the sample Pro's drive is quieter when reading DVDs but not quite as quick when transferring the contents over to the hard drive, which remains at 250GB.
Noise-wise there's little to complain about, then, as although the CPU's fan does spin up, it's not particularly noticeable.
A standard 43WHr battery, housed at the top, will be an Achilles Heel when we look at mobile usage. On a plus side, internal components are easy to get to, though.
