The New(Smallish) Hotness in Laptops Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325

by Brock

So the current state of my computing power consists of my nice fat hand built AMD powered PC at home, my MSI Wind U100 netbook and my Android phone on Verizon. The Android is holding down the pocket computing quite nicely. There isn’t much I can’t do on the phone. In fact with the exception of one or two e-mails so far all of my management of the video game I’m trying to get developed has happened on the phone. I haven’t used my desktop PC at all in the last month or so. Most of my computing happens on my work laptop or the MSI Wind. I spend huge quantities of time on the work computer each week and the rest of the time I use the Wind. The Wind functions extremely well for doing nothing but browsing web pages and may be watching the occasional SD youtube.com video. However it falls flat on it’s face as soon as a video goes HD or full screen. It also fails in the size of the screen. It’s like trying to watch video or view images with any detail on my phone, which is probably the phones only down fall. Which brings me to the solution.

This is the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325. This wee beasty is 13.3″ in screen size and slightly larger over all. It’s sporting a new processor from AMD that is looking to put the hurt on the currently dominating Intel Atom processor. The name of the processor definitely doesn’t do it justice. It’s called the AMD Turion Neo X2. The processor is currently running at 1.6Ghz which is similar to most Intel Atom processors but the key is that it is a dual core processor similar to the larger Intel Core 2 and “i” based chips. So basically you get twice the computing power in the same space as what the current Atom processors take up in a laptop. This is more than enough power to run HD youtube videos and probably even pull off some decent quality gaming. This bad boy packs in all the expected features for a high end netbook with one curious exception. No built in blue tooth for some odd reason. This means if you need bluetooth you have to give up one of your free USB ports to one of those micro bluetooth adapters. That aside I don’t think you can get a better portable computer for the price. Full spec sheet and video after the break.

    Key Features & Benefits

  • AMD Turion Neo X2 Dual-Core Mobile processor L625
    1.6 GHz, 1.6GT/s, 1 MB L2 Cache
  • 4 GB DDR2 memory
    Enough memory to handle today’s most memory-hungry applications
  • 320 GB 5400 RPM Serial ATA hard drive
    Store your music, videos, photos and documents with plenty of space to spare
  • Wired Ethernet, Wireless WiFi
    Connect to a broadband modem with 10/100 Ethernet; connect wirelessly to a WiFi network or hotspot with built-in 802.11b/g/n WLAN
  • 13.3″ diagonal widescreen TruBrite LED backlit TFT LCD display; 1366 x 768 resolution; ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics with 256-1919MB graphics memory

    Additional Features
  • Webcam
  • 1 x RGB output port, 1 x HDMI, 1 x microphone input port, 1 x headphone output port, 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x RJ-45 LAN port
  • 6 cell lithium ion battery
  • AC power supply included

    Software
  • Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (To learn more about the features of Windows 7,click here)
  • Microsoft Works and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Edition trial
  • Norton Internet Security 2010 trial

    Support & Warranty
  • 1-year Standard Limited Warranty

I’m ordering one of these up for the girl friend this week and baring any glaring issues with it I’ll be ordering one up for my self in the near future. I’ll also make a point to post a review of the laptop when I get some hands on time. Once again AMD comes through with the low cost alternative for the rest of us. Thanks AMD and Toshiba!