Digital Trends

Toshiba Satellite M305

May 13th, 2008 | by Ian Bell

Webcam and Microphone

The included webcam and microphone gave us a few problems during testing. We liked that the webcam could capture video at 1280x800, and recording video is very easy. Just start the camera and click the video box to record, but we were unable to get it to record audio no matter what we did. All of our videos were silent, and the “record audio” button was useless. We went into the preferences and it has an “audio volume” meter, and when we spoke it registered, but we couldn’t get it to work regardless. Strangely enough, the M305 includes Toshiba’s Speech System, which lets you bark out commands and have the PC do your bidding. We had no problems with this software and it works great. You can say “Open Internet Explorer” and the program opens a few seconds later. Why the microphone works for this feature but not the webcam is unknown.

Toshiba also includes a facial recognition feature that can use your face to log onto the computer, but it’s way too difficult to calibrate. In order for it to recognize your face you have to hold your face inside a transparent “face ouline” that has two eyes, a nose and a mouth. You have to align your parts with the frame’s parts, then follow it back and forth and up and down for about 30 seconds. We tried this exercise three times and every time it failed, which is ridiculous. It should be more like the Asus U6S, which simply zooms in on your face and takes a picture.

Battery life

We performed our DVD run-down test on the M305, and it lasted for a respectable 2 hours and 3 minutes, which is enough to catch a movie on a plane. You can buy a bigger 9-cell battery from Toshiba for just $129, and together they’d probably offer around 5 hours of battery life, which is great for frequent travelers.

Conclusion

The M305 certainly has a lot to offer folks who are looking for a semi-portable notebook. At just 5.2 lbs. it’s relatively light, small and would easily slip into a backpack. We love the elegant design and white lights that accent the black and grey colors – it’s a very attractive notebook, and clearly the company’s paying more attention to style as indicated by the M305 and the Qosmio. There were several small things that bothered us such as the webcam and facial recognition software, but the biggest gripe we have is with the bloatware. We really wish Toshiba would at least give customers the option to have it removed or just put it all on a CD that the user could browse at he or she’s leisure instead of mucking up the desktop with links to trialware.


Pros:

• Sleek looks
• 3GB of RAM
• Huge hard drive
• Very quiet

Cons:

• Lot of bloatware
• Couldn’t get mic to work on webcam
• Facial recognition software difficult to configure