Jason's Toshiba Satellite Pro 425CDT Review 12/1998

Specifications:

CPU	90 Mhz Intel Pentium
RAM	40 MB
Screen	11.3" Active Matrix
Weight	7+ Pounds
Hard Drive	810 MB
Pointer	Accupoint pointing stick
Peripherals	Swappable Floppy, CD-ROM
Ports	Parallel, Serial, PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard, Docking, external floppy, 2 PCMCIA, Headphone, MIC, IR

Overall Impressions

I have used the Toshiba 425CDT for almost two years now. This is a very nice portable computer for general-purpose use. The hard drive is a bit small by modern standards, and the CPU is a bit slow too, but it is good enough for typical applications such as word processing, web browsing, spreadsheets, tax software, financial management software, and more. Overall, I like this computer and have found it to be reliable and usable.

Ergonomics

The keyboard is excellent. It has excellent tactile feedback, and is laid out as well as can be expected for a laptop. The Toshiba also comes with a utility for remapping keys (especially useful for swapping the CTRL and CAPS LOCK keys). The screen is sharp and clear, and reasonably bright, however it lacks contrast and brightness adjustment controls. There is an anti-reflective coating that seems to work well in combating glare. Its brightness is fine indoors, but it is unusable in bright sunlight. The pointing stick works well, and is quite usable. The system is quite heavy (7+ pounds), so I wouldn't want to lug it around a lot. The temperature of the laptop gets warm, but it is no problem placing it on your lap for extended periods of time. It has a built-in fan which I have never noticed running.

Power

The battery life seems short- my experience has been that it lasts a bit less than 2 hours when in constant use. The laptop has its power supply built into the computer so all you need to carry is the power cord without a power brick, which is nice because it cuts down on the clutter. The Suspend mode sometimes has problems in Windows 95: when resuming from suspend mode, it often can not resume properly and reboots the system.

Multimedia

The CD-ROM fits into a bay that also can be used by a 1.44 MB floppy drive. The speaker is located in the front of the computer, and its sound is okay but not great. It definitely has trouble with the low and high range frequencies, especially at high volume.