not too bad, but the processor is a huge downside, but at the price its plenty for the market its aimed towards.

I will assume Intel x4500 graphics since you failed to mention them?

and yes, beats the hell out a netbook, except for that portability part...toshiba 17" laptops are HUGE

A Celeron?? No, thanks.. I will keep on using my Turion X2..

er... Netbooks are a different market.

You can fit about 5 Netbooks into the area of that huge 17" notebook.

intel GMA 4500M graphics... 2h:30m battery, not so bad for that price

A netbook is basically a cheap crappy notebook. That certainly fits the bill here.

Perfect gift for grandma.

I have been seriously disappoint by toshiba lately. 3 out of the 4 people i know who have one hate it and have serious driver issues. The forth one, my father, is running one that I installed ubuntu on. He is still occassionally annoyed but no longer 3 seconds sort of throwing it through a window. I won't outright blame vista, but rather toshiba's driver/bloatware software they ship with the machine. Its almost once a month i have to reinstall drivers.

Heh @ those knocking netbooks.

I know from firsthand experience Vista will bog down that Celeron, my netbook runs quite snappy with a pre-tweaked XP OS, not to mention is a fraction of the weight and size with a large keyboard. I wouldn't trade it in for this garbage.

tayb 08/13/2009 9:52 PM wrote: "A netbook is basically a cheap crappy notebook. That certainly fits the bill here."

With the main difference being that a netbook is usually small and light, whereas the Toshiba 17" is big and heavy--so it gives up the only real advantage a netbook has in the first place.

Good gift for a kids first computer or something but far from a beastly machine...but you get what you pay for.

I think i might get one for my girlfriend. The only uses PC for social networking and emails... LOL.

*She*

Many fail to see the point. This is a notebook and it will out perform any netbook in all categories except battery life. It has a faster processor, more memory(and can be upgraded), Bigger hard drive, and I do not know of a netbook with a burner in it. DUH! It is a notebook! This is a great value and can be easily made better by installing XP and getting rid of the Toshiba bloatware. A 17" notebook for $348? Try and find a better buy. Of course you can go and get a used notebook on ebay that MIGHT meet the same spec's. Get real......

@decoppel:

I don't see any reason not to upgrade the OS on that toshiba. vista certainly only qualifies as bloat.

but apart from that, it remains that this Penrym 45nm based Celeron will absolutely kill the Atom N270 in every performance benchmark out there. It's at least twice as fast.

im getting one for my mother, it is well suited for her, except for the OS, which i will switch out for one of my RTMs of windows 7

Calling it a "steal" is a questionable argument. Sure it has a lot in it for a low price, but it's too big to be really portable and too weak to replace a decent desktop. Cash spent one place is cash you can't spend somewhere else and I stopped buying marginal crap along time ago.

I have a Toshiba NB-205 and with 2gb ram and a 7200rpm 500gb HD, it is just about as good as a simple notebook that would be at least double the weight and size. And I get a 9 hour battery life.

I can't say I like the atom processor thought, it does not like photoshop too well

I have to agree with that.
If it had a better CPU and windows 7 included...
Well.. I'd probably convince the wife we should buy it.

It's a Celeron... it is a TERRIBLE processor. Honestly, an Atom is similarly spec'd to a Celeron. Celeron's are actually a joke.

yeah really. the original eee pc's had celerons and they were a lot slower than any of the atoms currently being produced.

That's better than the piece of junk Dell my school made us buy for $1000 each...

Some people ITT don't seem to realize that Intel recycles the Celeron name again and again. E.g., the first Celeron 900 was released in 2001 as a desktop processor, to be followed by mobile Celeron 900's etc.

The Celeron 900 in this machine is a 45nm Penryn, it scores around 2000 on PCMark Vantage. The Atom N270 scores around 1200 on PCMark Vantage. Differences in other benches are more extreme, for example the Celeron 900 takes ~30s for SuperPi vs. around ~90s for the N270...

@ coppulas

I'd prefer a lightweight netbook with a fullsized keyboard and 5 times the battery life, than to have a Notebook that can barely run any games anyway.

Try carrying a 17" notebook to school, and taking notes for 3-5 hours on battery power. Makes a netbook look mighty attractive.

Hmmm.... laptop(this) or a GPU upgrade to 2nd 4870.....me think me will get 4870.

And the classic question.....will it play Crysis???

Correct!
For doubters check: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=41498

NO thanks, I'll stick with my g51 gaming laptop well worth the $1100 I paid for it. Save that toshiba for teeny bops for school.

I checked on line - the real price is $48. I think this must have been a typo.

this is a pure desktop replacement. if your kid even has the slightest desire to ever carry the laptop anywhere then don't bother buying this. however, as a bargain desktop replacement this seems like a good deal. the celeron 900 will easily outperform any of the current atoms, faster clock speed, faster fsb, and larger cache. the only reasons i would hesitate to buy the toshiba is the lack of a free windows 7 upgrade and the fact that a dual core version of this celeron processor will be released soon and will probably target the same bargain market, so expect prices to be affordable.

Well, my current lappy is a 1.6GHz celeron with 512MB of RAM and a 40GB HDD (4-5 years old)...

This would be a damned cheap improvement.
Only gets used for online browsing and anime streaming by my bro anyways. Would be perfect for his use. (Though I won't tell him since I need an extra $500 before my i7 system is complete, and this would remove those funds... I'm a asshole... I'll just get him something with a 9800M GT later though).