Carla Thornton

Toshiba Satellite 1955-S801

It looks like an ordinary notebook, but tug a couple of side releases and the Toshiba Satellite 1955-S801's keyboard pops off for wireless use. No need to shut down the notebook or even ask permission from a swapping utility first; the keyboard seamlessly detaches and reattaches without skipping a beat. An attractive black unit with semitransparent keys, the keyboard looks and feels good, on or off the notebook. The keys have fine travel and a comfortable layout. The Tab key is a bit small, but the all-important Delete, Ctrl, and Insert keys sit in convenient locations on the bottom row. Detached, the keyboard worked reliably up to 4 feet away and did not have to be directly lined up with the infrared port on the notebook. Rubber plugs protect the connectors on the keyboard and the notebook from damage while you're using the keyboard wirelessly, and plastic pop-out feet angle the keyboard when it sits on flat surfaces. The keyboard's rechargeable battery pack lasts up to 20 days under "normal" use, according to Toshiba. The company throws in a wireless mouse, too, which uses two AA batteries that reportedly last for up to 48 hours of continuous use. A wireless keyboard comes in handy with the Satellite 1955-S801's 16-inch screen. It's only the second portable we've seen so far with this size display; it's also just the second notebook we've seen that uses a 2.2-GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor. Helped along by 512MB of memory, it earned an impressive PC WorldBench 4 score of 109, well above the scores for the notebooks we've tested that use mobile Pentium 4-M processors.
The 1955-S801 is large and heavy, and like most notebooks with desktop processors, it sprints through its battery life. The full-figured notebook is unusually thick at 2.2 inches, and it weighs 9.6 pounds--11.3 pounds counting the wireless mouse and the power adapter. In our tests, the notebook's enormous 12-cell battery lasted only 2.2 hours on one charge. Gloves might be in order if you pop the keyboard off very often: The pointy ends of the release levers stab the fingertips.
Its huge screen and peripatetic keyboard aside, the 1955-S801 is a mainstream all-in-one notebook. A fixed CD-RW/DVD-ROM combination drive sits on the right side of the case and a fixed floppy drive is on the left. All the standard notebook connections are present and accounted for except the serial and PS/2 ports. Bonus features include an S-Video-out port for hooking up a TV, a FireWire port, and dedicated audio controls in an attractive silver panel on the front of the notebook. The panel remains visible when you close the lid. However, the controls don't include their own power switch, so listening to music without powering up the notebook is not an option. We were a little disappointed in the 1955-S801's audio quality. The stereo speakers--small units that jut prominently from the back corners of the keyboard--sounded vaguely 3D (as promised), but they could have been richer and louder. We were happy with the fast, smoothly working volume wheel, however, located just around the front right corner from the audio buttons.The front of the case also features a handy status LED and an on/off switch for enabling the wireless mouse, as well as an on/off switch for Wi-Fi (802.11b) wireless access point scanning. However, the 1955-S801 comes standard with only a wireless antenna embedded in the lid, and not the wireless miniPCI card you also need for complete wireless readiness. Ordering the notebook with the miniPCI card adds another $100. The 1955-S801 doesn't have a docking-station option; Toshiba expects the generous number of USB 1.1 ports--three in all--to take care of desktop duties. Aside from having to remove a few more screws than usual, it's easy to reach the notebook's memory slots and the hard drive. But the button for ejecting discs from the DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive could be easier to locate. Flush with the body and tucked halfway beneath the beveled side of the case, the button is hard to find without looking. Toshiba provides no printed documentation except a quick-start foldout that newbies should find helpful--if some odd parts labeling doesn't confuse them (examples include "primary control button" and "secondary control button" for the left and right mouse buttons). A user's manual in Acrobat form does a nice job of guiding more-experienced users around the notebook.
With its huge 16-inch screen and wireless detachable keyboard and mouse, the Satellite 1955-S801 is about as close as you can get to a desktop PC and still have cordless power.

Buying Information

Toshiba Satellite 1955-S801 $ http://