I'm a pretty picky person when it comes to computers and computer parts, so it surprised me greatly that there was very little about this netbook that I could pick apart. I had planned to install Linux on the netbook when I bought it, so I expected to be typing a lot. Typing on this netbook's keyboard feels almost as natural as typing on a regular desktop keyboard. Most of the keys are full sized (letters, numbers, shift, enter). The relatively few exceptions to that are completely manageable in my opinion (function keys, tab, caps lock, arrows, page up and down, home, end, esc). The monitor looks at least as good as just about any other netbook around. The case has a solid feel and the chic-let keys respond well and are nicely spaced so accidental key presses are rare (not something a lot of other netbooks can claim). The touch pad is very responsive and I like that there are 2 separate buttons for mouse clicks, unlike some other netbooks which have a single rocker button which only allows you to do a left OR right click. The 3 USB ports are very nice as I like to use a mouse when I'm at home and I usually have my thumb drive plugged in, so I have a spare port for an external optical drive or whatever else may come up. Before I switched over to Linux, the installed Windows XP system seemed to perform as well as I've seen on a desktop. Playing videos, surfing the web, taking photos and video were all smooth and nothing seemed bogged down by lack of horsepower or system resources. As far as battery life, I haven't done any rigorous testing, but I'm getting at least 6 hours of use on a full charge and with the wireless on all the time and the monitor backlighting on full. I suspect most people will get far more than that with the default settings.
The only real reason that I rated this product 4 stars instead of 5 is that the system backup/restore paradigm seems to have been poorly thought out. I guess there is a restore partition on the harddrive which is common on netbooks. There is also software installed which allows you to backup the system and your applications to a DVD if you have a USB DVD burner. The backup DVDs created with this software are bootable and appear to be able to restore the system onto a blank harddrive. However, there were no installation/recovery disks included in the packaging, so if your harddrive died and you failed to make a backup of the system prior, I don't know how you would get the netbook working again short of sending it back to the manufacturer. My advice to anyone buying this netbook is to make a backup of the system to a DVD (actually 2 DVDs) when you first get it and hold onto those disks like your life depended on it.
To anyone who wants to buy a netbook and is thinking about this model, stop thinking about it and buy this model. At the very least, any annoyances you would have with this netbook you would also find on other netbooks, trust me. The keyboard alone would be enough to say this is better than anything else out there currently. But, as I stated earlier, there is far more than just one reason that this model is superior to others.Get more detail about Toshiba Mini NB205-N312/BL 10.1-Inch Royal Blue Netbook - 9 Hour Battery Life.
