The Toshiba Satellite A105 is for media lovers who are passionate about editing video, watching movies, and uploading photos to Flickr. This mainstream unit combines portability with a 15.4-inch widescreen, and though this machine is not meant for gaming, the rest of the components should satisfy your need for speed. The shade of dark gray surrounding the lid has a nice slimming effect on the Satellite.

The unit weighs 6.0 pounds, which is fairly light compared with other 15.4-inch-screen notebooks such as the HP Pavilion dv4000 (6.4 pounds) and the Acer TravelMate 8204WSMi (6.7 pounds). The Satellite has a bright, high-contrast ... read morescreen—perfect for watching a DVD or working with photo or video files, but glare can be troublesome when you’re working in bright lights on documents such as Microsoft Word or Excel files.

The Satellite comes loaded with a 2.0-GHz Pentium M 760, 1GB of RAM, and integrated Intel graphics.

A set of media buttons (Play/Pause, Stop, Rwd, and FFWD) control DVD and CD playback, both in a Windows or Linux environment. The built-in Harman Kardon speakers offer crisp MP3 playback.

It’s important to note that this system does not offer an option to upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Fortunately, there are enough third-party applications that can help you organize your music and photos—and since there is no TV tuner, the lack of MCE is not a deal-breaker.

You like seeing USB ports spread out? - The Satellite has two on the side and two in back. Rounding out its connectivity options are FireWire, S-Video, and VGA ports, as well as a 5-in-1 memory card reader. As you would expect, the Satellite comes with a dual-layer DVD±RW drive, and these days, you should expect nothing less from a multimedia notebook.

If you enjoy watching movies, editing home movies, and fiddling with photos, then the Toshiba Satellite A105 is a good choice, especially for the price. But its battery life limits you to short trips away from your desk.