5 Responses to “Toshiba Mini NB205-N312/BL 10.1-Inch Royal Blue Netbook – 9 Hour Battery Life”

1. Johnny Chan says:

   May 30, 2010 at 4:57 am

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   UPDATE:
   
   Just in case you choose to order a case for this netbook, keep in mind that the dimensions in the Amazon description or Toshiba’s website (10.4 x 7.6 x 1.27 inches) are the dimensions of this netbook WITHOUT the 6-cell battery. If you look at the side-view photo in the Amazon description area (the one with the 7.6″ measurement right not more than it), you’ll see it’s pictured without the battery. I just measured mine and with the 6-cell battery protruding from the back, it’s really 10.4 x 8.4 x 1.27 so many of the cases you find on Amazon made for 10″ netbooks may not fit the NB205 with the 6-cell battery. Okay that’s it for my update… read on for my original review…

   ———-

   I just expected my Toshiba NB205 yesterday and after spending many hours “playing” with it, I can easily say that, hands down, it is the BEST Netbook on the market now!

   At the end of next week, I’ll be traveling overseas and I wanted a small and lightweight laptop that I would be able to use to watch movies on the plane, transfer vacation photos and videos to, and use the internet for researching stuff from my hotel room. I now own a 15″ Macbook Pro but chose I didn’t want to take it with me since it’s a bit larger & heavier and I can’t afford to lose it. That’s when I started researching these Atom-based Netbooks.

   When I started researching, the Toshiba NB205 had not yet been released but there were still many netbook models out there by other manufacturers. I had originally considered the Samsung NC10, Acer Aspire One AOD250, Asus 1000HE, and Lenovo S10 as they all were pretty much equipped with similar configurations (Atom N270/N280 1.6 or 1.66Ghz cpu, 10″ screen, 1GB ram, 160GB HD, 6-cell Li-Ion battery, Windows XP Home) and priced in the $350-400 price range. I won’t go into too much detail about what I liked or didn’t like about the other harvest but I had pretty much narrowed it down to any the Samsung NC10 or the Acer AOD250. Then I came across a pre-release review from Laptop Magazine on the Toshiba and chose to wait on my netbook. It was certainly worth the wait considering this is the first netbook I’ve come across that really had noticeable differentiating features. When you equate all the others, it’s kind of hard to choose from one over the other because they’re all so similar!

   The 4 largest selling points on this Toshiba NB205 that had me wait for it was the 9-hour battery life, the look & feel of the keyboard, the size of the trackpad & buttons, and the overall aesthetics of it.

   The whole top of buying a laptop this small and compact is for its portability factor. When you have to lug a brick-based AC adapter with you in dread the battery in your laptop won’t last as long as you need it, it sure interferes with how portable carrying a laptop really is. A 9-hour lithium-ion battery will certainly solve that problem. Most of you are probably wondering how realistic that 9-hour rating really is… Let me just reassure you all, the battery life is GOOD! I brought it to a full charge, then unplugged it from the adapter and watched two movies on it (more on the movie playback capabilities later) and did 4 hours worth of web surfing afterwards — all off the power from the battery on a single charge! You students out there can now bring it to all your classes and not have to look for a wall outlet! Oh, btw, I had the screen brightness set to 1/2 (level 4 brightness setting) and turned off the Bluetooth.

   Netbooks are known for smaller keyboards and even worse, SMALL trackpads and trackpad button(s). In addition to the smaller size, many of the netbooks I saw in person at my local Fry’s Electronics had very “cheapy”-feeling keyboards — they just felt real fragile compared to the keyboard on my Macbook Pro. Enter the Toshiba NB205. Finally, a netbook that has a keyboard with keys that had the look and feel of a Mac keyboard and a robustly solid build to it. In addition to the look and feel, the keys were also pretty darn close in width to my Mac keyboard (both my Macbook Pro’s keyboard, and my desktop Mac’s keyboard). I’ll try to post some comparison photos on Amazon this weekend for all those attracted. The trackpad and buttons on the NB205 is also the largest I’ve seen in the netbook category. Toshiba did a tremendous job in getting this right. Most of the other netbooks had really small trackpads and small miniature trackpad button(s) that felt real flimsy. Another feature that I like with the trackpad that’s not stated anywhere is that the very right edge of the trackpad can be used for scrolling web pages or other ID (similar to the one on the Samsung NC10). This feature is not obvious as there are no arrow indicators like there is on the NC10 but it does support it!

   I won’t go into the aesthetics of this unit since you can pretty much see how incredible this netbook looks from the Amazon photos (I’ll also add my own photos this weekend so you can get a better feel for the size, etc.) but let me now shift focus on by it.

   Although I upgraded the reminiscence on the unit to 2GB (I installed the Crucial 2GB 200-pin SODIMM DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz Reminiscence Module and it works fantastic with the NB205!), all the hard I performed and am about to describe was done with the stock 1GB reminiscence.

   The very first thing I wanted to make sure this unit can do is play back, at the very least, DVD-quality movies (i.e. 480P movies (720×480 resolution)). One thing I’d HIGHLY recommend everyone who’s attracted in surveillance movies on their netbook do is download the FREE media player called VLC (Google “download vlc”). VLC is very lightweight and will play back movies a lot smoother than Quicktime or Windows Media Player; and given the inherently slower speeds of these Intel Atom processors compared to the Intel Core 2 Duo processors, by the VLC media player is your best bet. By a free program called “Handbrake”, one can exchange their Bluray or DVD movies to AVC/h.264-encoded movies, which is what I used to exchange some of my Bluray collection into a format that can be played-back on my NB205. Since it’s out of the scope of this review and would require a tutorial guide of its own, I won’t be able to clarify how you would go about converting your Bluray or DVD movies. Anyhow, I first converted my Bluray journal of Valkyrie to a 720×480 resolution with a conservative 864kbs bitrate. The NB205 had NO PROBLEMS playing it back… It played back with very charming video and the audio was synced up perfectly throughout the entire movie. So I chose to exchange the movie again…. this time, by more aggressive settings… I converted it to a resolution of 1024×600 (since this is the native resolution of the NB205′s screen) and a 2048kbps bitrate. Again, the NB205 was able to play the movie without a hitch. I didn’t bother trying to exchange the movie to 720P since the native resolution of the screen is only 1024×600 (it would be equivilent to 600P but 600P is not a standard). If you’re plotting to watch movies on the NB205 with someone else, you’ll be pleased to know that surveillance it from a 45 degree angle is very acceptible. Further than the 45 degree angle, you won’t be able to really see much so don’t expect to have more than 3 people surveillance from it (why would you have more than 2 or 3 people surveillance off a 10″ screen anyways!?).

   Given it’s capability to playback movies very smoothly, anything else I was going to throw at it would be child’s play. Anyhow, I was reading that this laptop does get hot but after playing back two movies on it, it was not unbearable when resting it on my lap. So it doesn’t seem like overheating problems will be too much of a concern for this laptop (but only long-term treatment can really confirm this).

   Another cool feature the NB205 sports that I’m not sure is available on all the other competitor models is a built-in accelerometer. It works the same way as the iPhone accelerometer but it’s in the NB205 purely to detect if the laptop is about to take a fall. When it detects motion, it quickly moves the hard drive heads away from the hard drive to prevent any mishaps in case the hard drive is now reading from or writing to the hard disks. By a Toshiba software utility that’s installed from the factory, you can exchange the sensitiviy threshold of the accelerometer or turn it off altogether.

   There are obviously a lot more features that the NB205 comes with but I’m not going to clarify each one austerely because they’re self-explanatory (such as bluetooth, wifi, etc.) but you can find out more about those features in Amazon’s description of this product.

   One final note before I conclude my review… Toshiba released two main models of the NB205 on the same day… the NB205-N310/311/312/313 (which is the model I have — the NB205-N310/BN to be exact) and the NB205-N210. I reflect if you want to save $50, the NB205-210 would be a excellent choice as well — provided you don’t need Bluetooth or the Mac-style “chiclet” keyboard. For the superfluous $50, even if, you also get the much sleeker, unique Toshiba-styling of the NB205-N31X series.

   So if you’re in the market for a very portable laptop, and you’re considering a 10″-based netbook, the Toshiba NB205 is packed with features, enclosed around a very aesthetically pleasing body, and is very competitively priced!!!
   

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2. N. Vance says:

   May 30, 2010 at 5:17 am

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   Went out last night to look at netbooks for the hundredth time. After looking at the same ole dull models, plastic, cramped, creaky, cheap feeling, I came across this beauty. A very sturdy model, well made, and I was hooked on first site. After thinking that it was just an visual thing, I started to type away on the keyboard and what a thing of gorgeous engineering. The Home, End, PrtSc keys are all in the proper place at the upper right, some other netbook keyboards required the use of the Fn key to use those keys (this model includes separate page up and down keys too). The screen is nice and bright, I was able to equate it side by side with a Dell mini and the Eee 1005HA and the Toshiba came out on top!!! Lastly, the touch pad is top of the line. It is not too small and there are separate L and R buttons located on the bottom of the pad like a “normal” laptop. As you know some other manufacturers make one rectangular button on the bottom or one on each side of the track pad…this one is, again, top notch.
   
   For the money, you can not go incorrect with purchasing this laptop. Fantastic feel, sturdy build, awesome battery life, and you just feel excellent by it Hopefully this helps in your choice concerning a netbook hold.

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3. Doug Pardee says:

   May 30, 2010 at 6:07 am

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   I just got my NB205 last Saturday. So these are initial, early impressions.

   #1 (terrible first impression): It took all afternoon and into the evening to get the unit talking to my LinkSys WRT54G wireless router. The wireless communication was connected, the router had assigned an IP address, but the NB205 refused to get it. It sat at “acquiring IP address” in anticipation of it timed out. I have a static IP block reserved on my router, so I gave the NB205 a static IP address and filled in the gateway and DNS server IPs, and it *still* wouldn’t talk. In technical idiom, it wasn’t just a problem with ARP – the entire transport layer austerely wasn’t working.

   A wired connection to the router worked fine. But that wasn’t a workaround that I was prepared to accept.

   I researched on the Web and found that various Toshiba models seem to have a lot of distress with wireless, and that there are probably a hundred different things that people said finally got theirs working.

   What finally worked for me was to turn off WEP security on both the router and the NB205. That immediately got them talking, at the expense of breaking all of my other wireless links (two computers and a Wii). Then I turned WEP back on, and they stayed talking. No problems since. EDITED: after over two months, still no problem. It was just the one-time startup.

   #2 (excellent): The battery life is pretty danged long. Possibly not the claimed nine hours, but seven or eight (with WiFi turned off and by power-saver profile). I suspect that a excellent part of that comes from by an e-IPS show.

   #3 (terrible but probable): The manual is provided on the hard drive, not in print. The manual is confused and mostly a waste of time. This seems to be par for the course for modern computers.

   #4 (very slightly terrible): The manual says that if you shut the unit down by closing the lid (sleep mode, hibernate, or whatever) that when you open the lid it’ll start back up. It doesn’t. You have to press the power button. EDITED: It will come back on involuntarily if you’ve left it plugged into AC power the whole time. It doesn’t if it’s unplugged, which for me is pretty much “always”.

   #5 EDITED: (very annoying in anticipation of I figured out what was incorrect): I had given up on by Sleep/Standby mode because about half of the time when I turned it back on the unit completely rebooted. Hibernate mode always seemed to work. The problem turned out to be that one of the latches for the battery pack wasn’t locked, and the netbook would lose power if the unit was lifted in a way that tried to separate the pack from the main unit. So it was my own error, but I learned to pay attention to those latches.

   #6 (generally excellent): I got this netbook specifically for writing. The keyboard seemed to be the best available in the netbook form factor, and I’m result the keyboard to be reasonably usable for extended typing sessions. A couple of keys got relocated into funky positions, even if. (Possibly other netbook keyboards do the same, I don’t know.)

   #7 (excellent): The touchpad is the first one that I’ve found to be really usable.

   #8 (mildly concerning): I had to turn off the vibration alerts because every time I click the touchpad, it sets off the vibration detector.

   So… excellent keyboard, excellent touchpad, excellent show, excellent battery life. That’s what I needed, and it’s working out well. But I have collected some scars from the rough edges of getting it set up and the power on/off arrangements.

   FIVE DAYS LATER (an update): I’m really enjoying this small guy. I finally got everything configured the way that I want, and I like working with it. My only day-to-day complaint is a silly one: I sometimes write while lying down, with my legs bent and the netbook propped against my legs, and in that position the clicker buttons on the touchpad rest against my tummy and tend to click when I don’t want them to. I’ve learned to use Fn-F9 to disable the touchpad while I’m doing that.

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4. Himurax13 says:

   May 30, 2010 at 6:25 am

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   Well I have been doing investigate and playing with netbooks for several months now. I had to replace my aging 5 year ancient HP that was recently stolen. I wanted something with a long battery life and was extremely small and portable.
   
   I rolled down to my local best buy on July 4th and I was hell bent on getting the ASUS 1000HE. I found out that the model they sold only had the Atom 270, but I wanted the Black Tie warranty so I was going to live with that. But, when I got there, they did not have any in stock. In fact, the only netbook that had the Atom 280 was the Toshiba NB 205. I never even heard of it. I found out that they were out of stock so I ran home and called in anticipation of I found a best buy that had one in stock. I read some reviews but they were dismal at best.
   
   After playing with it non stop for 3 days, here is what I like about it.
   
   1. The Case is much better looking than any other netbook out there. It even looks nicer than the Mac Books. It is much nicer than the ASUS 1000HE.
   
   2. The screen is very crisp and bright. It also has 8 levels of brightness.
   
   3. The Keys are very nice to type on and are spaced out well.
   
   4. The touchpad is responsive and the left and right keys are placed like a normal laptop.
   
   5. Although it took some time to get the wireless working, it hooks up quicker than my other 2 laptops.
   
   6. It runs XP so with some insignificant tweaks, it ran just as quick as my other laptops.
   
   7. It plays MP4 movies/videos very well.
   
   8. It handles office applications like Excel and Access very well.
   
   9. I was able to watch 3 full length MP4 movies and still have over half the battery life left.
   
   10. It boots up quick and it has no problem with multiple windows.
   
   11. Netflix live stream videos work fantastic on it.
   
   12. 3 USB Ports (one can charge while it is off), 1 VGA Port, 1 RJ45 Port, and a SD Port.

   Now on to what I don’t like.
   
   1. The back of the battery does stick out another inch but it does seem to act like a bumper. I bought a Targus bag with a handle and it fits perfectly.
   
   2. The speaker is very inadequate, the earphone jack works well.
   
   3. The Wireless setup was a pain. I wish it had a dedicated switch.
   
   4. The lessons manual is nearly a waste of time.
   
   5. Can’t really exchange the screen resolution (although the stock settings are fine).

   All in all it was a pleasant surprise and I am glad I waited to buy.
   

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5. L. Dumas says:

   May 30, 2010 at 6:43 am

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   I’ve owned this small guy for about 2 months now, I’ve tested several net-books prior and can honesty state that this is the best net-book on the market.

   Several people have complained about it not accepting wireless relations, my advice: READ THE MANUAL. It tells you how to do it if for some reason your net-book is not set up to do it already, it’s as austerely as pressing two keys simultaneously.

   Also, how quick a web-page loads is not a function of your computer, rather it is a function of your internet connection, if you only achieve transfer rates of 56kbps, it’s because you’re on a 56K connection, so ignore those reviewers.

   The island style keyboard is brilliant, but be advised, if you type by the book, it will take some getting used to. If you use this laptop and another laptop with a traditional style keyboard, you will most likely experience an unpleasant amount of typo’s on the traditional keyboard.

   The only read drawback of this net-book is the track-pad. The track-pad is unresponsive reasonably often for several seconds and lags and skips on occasion, but this isn’t a real killer, especially if you have even the smallest facade of patience.

   Bottom Line:

   Pros:

   -less that 2 pounds.
   
   -gorgeous screen, brilliant colors.
   
   -keyboard is fantastic.
   
   -has Reminiscence Sync, works well with external hard-drives.
   
   -long battery life, not 9 hours unless on power-saver mode. more like 6.5 – 7.
   
   -some excellent software comes pre-loaded on it.
   
   -keyboard shortcuts are well positioned.
   
   -full sized keyboard.
   
   -track-pad is twice as huge as other net-books.
   
   -absolutely perfect for online activities. *Word of warning, if you are the kind of person that saves hundreds of pictures and composition files, buy a USB flash drive or an external hard-drive and store them on there, I recommend people to do this with all their computers (net-books or otherwise) because it keeps their machines running quick.
   
   -backup disc creator comes pre-loaded on it from toshiba. I recommend you make one as soon as you buy any new PC.
   
   -Toshiba support is brilliant. I have never owned a faulty Toshiba product.
   
   -comes with a HDD shock protector, so you don’t shake your laptop too much and ruin the hard-drive.
   
   -connects to the internet flawlessly, in a matter of seconds.
   
   -extremely portable.
   
   -contains a port for SD reminiscence card, no need to connect your camera through USB.
   
   -indicator lights on front are a nice touch.
   
   -very sleek, appealing design.

   Cons:

   -only 3 USB ports, buying a USB hub is recommended.
   
   -the speakers are terrible, must buy external speakers if you want to hear anything.
   
   -comes loaded with trial version of Norton anti-virus, which is a terrible anti-virus and firewall provider, I recommend uninstalling it after hold.
   
   -no CD drive, which is common on net-books, an external drive works better anyways, and you can hold blu-ray external drives for around 80$.
   
   -the track-pad is a small annoying at times, as mentioned above.
   
   -the fan is not user controlled on any PC, this isn’t really a problem with the net-book, all PC’s have this problem, they should follow Mac’s example..
   
   -not a lot of Random Access Reminiscence (RAM), don’t even consider playing games on here, although I have had success by by my external hard-drive to store the game files and play them while plugged in (I did this with Peggle Nights, a small game that takes up very small space).
   
   -gets hot after about 4 hours of use, which is still phenomenal.

   Recommended equipment if you do buy a netbook (or laptop for that matter):

   -An external hard-drive should be bought with any new computer, whether it be a laptop, net-book, or desktop. An external hard-drive allows you to save video, composition, pictures, etc. to an external location and preserves disk space, making your computer run as quick as it did upon hold. I recommend hard-drives produced by Western-Digital or Toshiba, they are both very well made and reasonably priced, if you are an obsessive compulsive saver (the type that saves pictures, composition, etc. for single use and never deletes them) I recommend at least a 500GB external hard-drive. I personally use a 1.5 TB external, and store DVD movies on it for extended road-trips. External hard-drives can run anywhere from 50$ for a cheapy to 500$ for a very large large hard-drive (2TB+) with software loaded on it, my 1.5 TB western digital hard-drive cost about 95$, and a Toshiba 500 GB is around 70$, well worth the storage space and extended PC life, and they can be used on multiple computers.

   -An external dvd drive and writer, this is a must have. Allows you to read CD’s and DVD’s and burn them. I recommend buying one of the following brands: LG, Sony, Toshiba. Sony offers them with Blu-ray playback and burning, which is not very useful unless you have a blu-ray player, or want to store large amounts of data. Things to look for when buying an external dvd player: make sure it is DVD+R, DVD-R, and DVD-RW compatible, otherwise you will have to choose your media sensibly. Lightscribe is a clean small program cropping up lately, which allows you to etch words into the tops of CD’s and DVD’s, such as the name of the CD or your name. This feature is clean, but be aware that it requires special discs, DO NOT USE LIGHTSCRIBE ON NON-LIGHTSCRIBE DISCS.

   -A flash-drive or “thumb-drive.” Ever want to transfer a large file from ne computer to another, and E-mail just won’t cut it? Enter, flash drive. These small guys are perfect for small-portable storage space.

   -Line-Out or USB external laptop speakers. In the case of this netbook, external speakers are a must. I recommend Logitech V20 speakers for laptops (excluding those running windows outlook). Which reminds me, the NB205 comes with Windows XP home, which I reflect is a excellent thing, as Outlook is not nearly as user friendly.

   -USB hub. Allows you to connect multiple usb devices to a single port. Be warned, these do not work with High-Speed USB cables, such as those used with external hard-drives and external DVD drives, except in some rare cases.

   Hope this review helped.
   

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