Toshiba Satellite M35X-S349 15.4" Notebook PC (Intel Pentium M Processor 735 (Centrino), 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

Rating:
Summary: mobile and yet powerful with bright 15" screen
Review: I looked at several notebooks from Sony, HP, Dell, and Apple, and this Toshiba was the best. First, the screen is very bright and sharp. 1.7 centrino is fast enough for most video, web surfing, and regular application. You can easily increase the memory to 2GB ( comes with 1x 512MB) which I updated by additional 512MB. DVD multidrive was better than others except Sony which had the dual layer. However, the real lightweight mobile notebooks have small screens (most 13"), and the desktop replacement notebooks such as the Sony K series or Toshiba's bigger version are too heavy and have very short battery life.
So, if you want a laptop, you want to carry and still use like desktop, this Toshiba is a very nice alternative.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Bright Screen with Excellent Performace!
Review: I've just bought 349 after i saw SONY, HP & DELL and i'm quite impressed with the performance of Toshiba, surely the screen is amazingly crisp and bright. Although the performance is excellent still i'll go for the memory upgrade. No negetive points i have noticed so far except that it takes longer time to load windows at the starup. The battery backup is really good. If you are looking for a great performer with light weight mobility then you must go for this one.

Rating:
Summary: Good Laptop for a Great Price, but...
Review: The keyboard has a very weird layout. So weird, in fact, that I decided to return mine and pay a 15% restocking fee at Best Buy (Amazon doesn't have a restocking fee for laptops as far as I know). The biggest issue I had with the keyboard is that there is no Ctrl key on the right side of the keyboard. If you use computers throughout the day you would likely use this key with the arrow keys and your right hand to jump around text and spreadsheets, among other things (pasting, copying, etc). Also, the Windows button is on the top - for me not as big of a deal but other reviewers had an issue with that.

However this laptop is a very good laptop other than this, and at a very good price... lots of memory and hard drive space, DVD burner, awesome widescreen screen, and Toshiba is one of the most reliable laptop brands according to Consumer Reports (Apple is by far the most reliable, followed by both Sony and Toshiba).

After returning the product I purchased the Sony VAIO VGN-A250 from Amazon. Almost identical features - the only differences are that the Sony DVD burner is a double layer drive (not super important for the majority of the public), and the Sony memory card reader only accepts Memory Sticks (which Sony cameras use) whereas Toshiba's memory card reader accepts 5 different types of cards (including SD, the most popular). Additionally the Sony turns out to be $100-200 more.

Lastly, Toshiba appears to be replacing their M35X line with M45 at the moment, which at a first glance is even cheaper, so keep a lookout for those.