For one thing, the glossy black chassis, accented with a subtle carbon-fibre graphic, can be quite a magnet for fingerprints and smudges; however the unit's subtle curves and smart tapering down (from about 1.5 inches in back to just over a half inch within the front) turn it into a great design for carrying in your hand or inside a bag.
Along the front edge from the chassis is really a row of LED status lights (power,
Wi-Fi, hard-drive access, and so forth), which are visible regardless of whether the laptop is open or closed. Thankfully, they're little, neatly arranged, and not annoyingly bright. General, the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 maintains the trim, classy appear of Toshiba's Satellite line.
At a price of close to £500, it's not necessarily a bad bargain - albeit that this specific sku is really a US version, not directly available in britain. You'll find the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 by shopping around online, and there are UK versions with slightly different specs.
Though the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 laptop computer is tough to beat for text and video, it isn't ideal. Whilst you are able to crank up the brightness to a very high level, the screen offers only eight levels of brightness, which isn't enough for fine-tuning.
Complementing the sweet display may be the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324's sound, which is somewhat better than the audio of other ultraportables but still has noticeable roll-off about the lower range (a typical concern for laptop computer speaker systems). On the whole, the Toshiba's voice is pretty clear for a notebook, but the volume seemed low even when we turned it completely up. Luckily, the Smart Audio utility has an equalizer function to boost the presence. While the T135D-S1324 sounds more advanced than number of laptops, its speakers lack the power and precision essential for it to be a true multimedia machine.
Folks searching for additional value will appreciate the fact Toshiba doesn't skimp on software. The Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 comes bundled with Windows 7 House Premium 64-bit and Microsoft Works 9/a great package that's worth stepping up to, even if you are considering saving a few quid on an additional laptop with Vista (or even XP). You'll also find on this machine a fair collection of basic media and maintenance utilities to assist lighten the tedium of computing. For neophytes and experienced users alike, the T135D-S1324's electronic and paper documents cover fundamental setup, Windows functions, bundled utilities, and troubleshooting in fair detail.
Once you become familiar with the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 and get down to typing, the initial shine starts to dull a bit. The Satellite's touchpad has a slightly textured surface for easier fingertip control, however the pinch-and-zoom and scrolling multitouch functions aren't quite as smooth as they could be. The large drawback, however, is the keyboard. While the layout is good, all the keys are relatively little, and the use of function keys a lot, you will need to use your fingernail to press the tiny F1 to F12 buttons. (Slightly offsetting this concern, the laptop computer has an on-screen menu that pops up whenever you hold down the Fn key, letting you toggle some of the basics such as screen brightness and muting.) In addition, the keyboard has no backlighting, so typing inside a dim environment can be challenging. General, it is a decent keyboard if you'd prefer a softer feel about the keystrokes, but for those who have big/or even average-size/mitts, the small keys could make typing a chore.
For all that there's to like about the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324, its benchmark scores put it during the pack. Outfitted with an AMD Turon Neo X2, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, and an ATI Radeon 3200 graphics chip, this laptop was powerful enough to decode every digital video file we threw at it; its anemic WorldBench 6 score of 59 took a toll, however, and it finished in the center of its class for overall performance. On balance, serious travelers will like its battery life, as it managed to last 4 hours, 55 minutes in our tests.
