No, I didn’t buy a new laptop. This thing right here is my cousin’s new computer. I accompanied her last week in the nearby BestBuy outlet to help her pick out a new laptop. She already had a brand of choice – Toshiba so it wasn’t difficult and it didn’t take long for her to narrow down her choice. My cousin decided to get the mid-sized Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005 for $649 (before taxes).

Like I’ve mentioned here several times before, I am the family in-house geek/desktop support so I had the privilege of unboxing the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005, installing the necessary software and testing it out for a week. Here are some of the tech specs and product images of this mid-sized laptop:

Specifications:

• Intel® Core™ i3-330M processor with 3MB L3 cache and 2.13GHz processor speed.
• 4GB DDR3 memory (expandable to 8GB).
• Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support
• 16″ TFT-LCD high-definition widescreen display w/ TruBrite technology (1366 x 768 resolution).
• 500GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD w/ 32-1696MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory.
• Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
• Built-in Harman/Kardon stereo speakers with Dolby Sound Room support.
• Built-in wireless LAN (802.11b/g/n)
• Built-in 10/100 Ethernet LAN w/ RJ-45 connector.
• Built-in webcam and microphone
• Multiformat media reader: Secure Digital, Secure Digital High Capacity, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard and xD-Picture Card formats.

Additional Images:

The first thing I did with it was create the restore discs which ate up a total of 5 DVDs – 3 Recovery DVD Discs, 1 Windows Recovery Environment (64-bit) Disc and #1 Toshiba Application and Drivers DVD. Since it was bought from BestBuy, it came with the BestBuy Software Installer program but I didn’t need it so I immediately removed it from the system. The Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005 doesn’t have too much bloatware (trial software/games) installed but it does have a lot of Toshiba applications and programs on it. I didn’t remove them but I disable some of them from Startup so that the computer can boot up faster.

It’s powered by Intel’s new entryl-level processor the Core i3 with 2.13GHz of processing power so it boots up fast, loads programs fast and handles multitasking very well. It comes preinstalled with 4GB of RAM and is upgradeable to 8GB. Display is a 16″ TFT LCD high-definition widescreen which I tried playing videos with and I can say that the quality was very good, providing clear and crisp images. The built-in Harman Kardon speakers also do a very good job and produce very good audio for a laptop. It didn’t have any problems identifying and connecting to my WiFi network. It’s quite heavy at 6.5 lbs, but this laptop is not designed for portability but rather as a home computer or a desktop computer alternative. It has a glossy metal finish like my Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872, so it can be a fingerprint and smudge magnet but that’s a very small issue compared to all the other features/specs that it has to offer. I also love that it has a powerful High-Capacity Li-Ion 12-cell battery that provides about 6 hours and 30 minutes of battery life.

The Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005′s graphics card is an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD which is good for watching HD videos but it’s not built for gaming, although I’m sure you can play some of the earlier game titles without any problems. If you’re looking for something that can play some of the new game titles, you might want to consider the A505-S6025 which comes with the NVIDIA GeForce 310M (512 MB GDDR3).

The only thing I wasn’t able to test was the built-in webcam and microphone. I installed Skype and tried a video call but it was long enough to test the video quality of the webcam and the audio quality of the microphone. Although it has HDMI connectivity, what sucks is that it doesn’t have Bluetooth or a Blu-Ray player.

Overall, the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005 is a very good and affordable mid-sized laptop. I made some comparisons with other mid-sized laptops, comparing price/specs and the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005 offered the best bang for the buck.

Check out the full product description and specifications of the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6005 here.

For those of you who follow me in Plurk, many of you already know by now that my laptop, a Compaq Presario C714NR died on me last week. Now you know why I haven’t updated or published new posts during the past week. Anyways, I took my laptop to BestBuy and had the Geek Squad check it. After doing a series of tests, they determined that it was the motherboard. I wasn’t that convinced because the guy I talked to didn’t sound too confident with his answers. I thought about asking a second opinion from another computer repair shop but since the laptop is still under warranty, I’m sending it back to HP/Compaq so they can check and/or repair it. I’ve already contacted them and they’ll be sending a box for shipping. I’m hoping that the initial diagnosis is wrong and that it’s not the motherboard that’s broken but something minor that can be easily repaired and is covered by the warranty because it only has a 1 year limited warranty.

Since I initially thought that the laptop was no longer under warranty and that I couldn’t have it fixed/repaired, I went ahead and looked for a new one to replace it. I searched online for the best deal I could find and found one over at BestBuy. It was for a Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872 which was on sale for $599 (regular retail price $749). Because I used a BestBuy credit card to purchase it, I was able to avail of an 18-month no interest financing offer.

Specifications:

• Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T5800 with 800MHz frontside bus, 2MB L2 cache and 2.0 GHz processor speed
• 3 GB PC6400 DDR2 800 MHz SDRAM
• 250 GB SATA HDD (5400 rpm)
• DVD-SuperMulti± with Labelflash™ drive
• harman/kardon® stereo speakers
• 15.4″ WXGA high definition LCD widescreen display with TruBrite® Technology
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD with up to 128MB-1294MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory
• Built-in wireless LAN Intel® Wi-Fi Link 5100AGN (802.11a/g/n)

Additional Images:

The Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872 was only available online so it wasn’t available for store-pickup and I had no choice but to pay for shipping. I bought it Wednesday afternoon and got Monday afternoon. I’m glad that I was able to get it while it was on sale because a couple days after I bought it, it was back to its original retail price. I’ve only had this Toshiba Satellite A305-S6872 for a couple days now and I haven’t tried all of its features like the webcam, media card reader and other stuff so I can’t write a review right now, but for sure I’ll be able to write a review in about a couple weeks time so watch out for that.

On a side note, now that I have this to work with, I’ll be doing a lot of catching up in the next few days – publishing new posts, blog hopping, replying to comments and emails. I’m also working on a new blog design/layout which I hope I would be able to finish and implement soon.

Thank you for your time and have a good day!