Digital Trends

Toshiba Satellite M300-S1002X

July 15th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Features and Design

One of the reasons the M300 is so inexpensive is that it is pre-configured by Toshiba and only available at retail and online. That said, it’s still relatively well-configured and isn’t lacking in any particular area considering it’s a business notebook and not a gaming or multimedia PC.

Midsize

These days, 14.1” notebooks are something of a rare breed since they straddle the line between being an ultra-portable and a desktop replacement. Some manufacturers such as Apple (MacBook Air review), Dell, and Lenovo (X300 review) have begun moving to a 13.3” platform instead for increased portability at the expense of a smidgen of screen real estate. We still like the 14.1” size though, because it is a perfect compromise (in our opinion) between size and portability. Larger 15.4” notebooks and up are too big to haul around, and smaller 12.1” notebooks are just too small.

Intel Platform

The M300 uses an Intel platform that is based on the popular 965 chipset, with a Core 2 Duo T8300 “Penryn” CPU (though it’s the lower-rung chip with just 3MB of L2 cache instead of 6MB) clocked at 2.4GHz. It sports 2GB of DDR2 667MHz SDRAM, and also uses the onboard Intel X3100 graphics adapter as well as the A/G/N wireless and Bluetooth as well.

Ports and Connectors

Ever since the release of the Apple MacBook Air, a notebook’s potential expandability has become a feature shoppers are concerned about all of a sudden. Nobody wants a notebook with too-few USB ports, for example. On the expandability front the M300 offers what we would consider the standard payload, nothing too extravagant, but no major omissions either. It features three USB ports, VGA-out, headphone/mic jacks, a FireWire port, ExpressCard, and 10/100 Ethernet as well as a 56K modem. There’s also a built-in 3-in-1 media card reader for MMC, xD and SD cards.

OS Situation

Unlike every notebook we’ve ever reviewed in the past year or so, the M300 does not use Windows Vista for its operating system, but good ole’ Windows XP Professional. We’ll admit we were surprised to see this since XP was supposed to have been officially dead as of June 30th, 2008. Microsoft said it would continue to sell the OS for use in ultra-portable PCs such as the Asus Eee PC however, which the M300 is most certainly not. Regardless, we certainly don’t mind as long as Microsoft doesn’t.

Software Bundle

Like previous Toshiba notebooks we’ve reviewed, the M300 comes with quite a bit of pre-installed software. In addition to the numerous Toshiba utilities such as Disc Creator, Speech System, Power Saver and others, Toshiba also includes a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007 and a 60-day trial of Norton 360 All-In-One Security. Other pre-installed apps include a business card maker, Picasa 2, Netwaiting, Google Desktop and Intervideo WinDVD.

Image Courtesy of Toshiba