Toshiba Satellite A100

The A100 is designed as an all-round notebook that would be a good buy for students, considering its price and specifications. It features an Intel Core Duo Processor T2300 running at 1.66GHz, 512MB DDR2 RAM and a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 graphics processor.

Its LCD panel is a 15.4in TruBrite widescreen with a native resolution of 1280x800, and it looks very good under most light conditions. A SuperMulti, double-layer DVD burner with a maximum speed of 2.4x for DVD + R DL media and a 60GB Serial ATA hard drive complete the storage specs.

In our performance tests, it scored 83 in PC WorldBench 5, and 10,363 in 3DMark 2001SE. When compared to the Toshiba Tecra A7, which costs $80 less and uses an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics adapter, the A100 lags in 3-D performance by about 2000 points. Its battery life is better than the Tecra A7, lasting 147min under worst case conditions - nearly an hour longer than the A7.

Hotkeys reside on the blue, illuminated trackpad for ease of navigation, as well as on the side of the keyboard. There is also a fingerprint reader, for security.

All the necessary connectivity options have been catered for, including Bluetooth 2.0 EDR (enhanced data rate), a 5-in-1 media reader, FireWire, Infrared with a remote control, 4 x USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi a/b/g.