The Toshiba Mini NB205 is a great little netbook that truly is as advertised.
Long battery life, easy to type on keyboard, great quality and just an over all great product.
I held off for a long time getting one as I didn't think there was any way they could live up to the hype, have a good battery life or be very useful as a small laptop. Just didn't seem possible to be all that and be so small and portable. Well let me tell you, this is as good as a lot of laptops I have used in my time and is just perfect for so many reasons.
First off the quality of the product is just great. You will like the feel of the overall surface of it, it's not shiny smooth plastic but seems to have a course yet comfortable feel to it. The mouse fingerpad is larger than I thought it would be and easy to to move the cursor with. I will most likely get a small mouse for it eventually but that's for my own need for one. The unit works fine with what it came with.
The screen as well is very clear and vibrant. You can adjust the brightness and settings quite easily with the Toshiba settings as well as any other settings like power management, sleep mode and battery life modifications.
Setting up the wifi is only difficult if you go about it as if you were using a desktop. Everything on the NB205 has to be done through the Toshiba included control panel selections and not the default window based ones. So you use the Toshiba network connections option to set up your wifi settings and you are good to go. If you try to go about it the usual way with the Windows Network Connections option you will start to really get frustrated as it wasn't meant to be used for this mini. Everything is nice and easy if you use the included Toshiba based programs. Took me awhile to figure out but once I realized that was the case its been smooth sailing ever since. Anywhere I am I go right to that option and am able to pick up signals easily and add them quickly to the mini and continue on with where I was.
Load times are great too. Once you push the very easy to find and nicely centered power button in the center of the mini, you will be in windows XP in no time. I've had a few programs open at once and the delays were barely noticeable. It isn't as fast and reactive as a regular laptop or desktop will be but for a computer this size it's greater than expected.
Lastly included with the NB205 is a webcam that is integrated right into the top of the inside of the screen. My family used Skype a few times with it already and each time it worked quite well. A few lag issues due to some wifi break ups but the camera and images were great for such a little product.
The real drawbacks to this great netbook are..
Firstly the speaker is horrible. If you are going to be going on sites like Youtube or listen to mp3s on this, you must get a usb speaker attachment or rely on headphones. The speaker is very little and hidden under the bottom of it and even on full volume you will struggle to hear things with it. With speakers or headphones though it sounds perfect.
Also like most if not all netbooks, it will get hot very quickly under it. A netbook cooler is a must if you are going to be using this on long trips or for long periods of time. Not to mention that it will get hot while using it on your lap, it also can't be good to have the computer that hot for long periods of time.
Those were the only major things to note that I found with this. I haven't fully tested it by putting on many applications or programs but of course this isn't a gaming computer. I'm sure some programs will work but don't get this if you want a computer to play all your high level games on as you will be very disappointed when they don't work at all.
I would say get the speaker/headphones, a mouse, the cooling pad and maybe even a USB DVD drive if you want to get the full potential out of this fine little netbook. None of those things are needed and they will add quite a lot more to the cost you are putting into the netbook but if you plan on using this for more than just trips or in class you may as well get that little extra something that a travel computer can give you.
This is a must get if you aren't sure what netbook to get. This will do everything you need and more and is very reasonably priced. I can't recommend it enough. Results and satisfaction will vary but so far I have been quite pleased and don't see that changing any time soon. The battery life alone makes this a great product. Get more detail about Toshiba Mini NB205-N312/BL 10.1-Inch Royal Blue Netbook - 9 Hour Battery Life.
