The Toshiba A135 series notebook is

The Toshiba A135 series notebook is offered in a wide variety of configurations, and ranges in price, at common big-box and online resellers, from under $700 to nearly $1500. The particular model under review here, an A135-S4427 provided by Toshiba, falls near the lower end of this range, and at first glance appears to be an excellent choice for the value-minded consumer looking to obtain a nicely outfitted notebook. The S4427 comes with Vista Home Premium, an Intel Core Duo T2250 processor, one gigabyte of RAM, 120 gigabytes of hard drive space, and a DVD-SuperMulti drive, all for well under $1000. Although a stripped-down Celeron configuration will generally cost the least of any A135 model notebook, the S4427, for not a whole lot more money, and provides just about everything one might hope for in a non-gaming, consumer-oriented notebook.


While comparing the prices of various A135s, I actually found myself thinking that this particular Toshiba series really is exemplary when it comes to illustrating the somewhat confusing task of pricing and purchasing a notebook. Yes, it’s possible to save some money by going with a weak CPU and minimal RAM, but unless an extra 15 or 20% cost is truly prohibitive, it almost never makes sense to purchase the weakest model in a series. Conversely, from the perspective of value, it rarely makes sense to opt for one of the most expensive models within a particular line. In the case of the A135, it’s possible to spend nearly double what an S4427 would cost, but from my perspective, an upgrade to the Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 and twice as much RAM and hard drive space is not worth the very substantial jump in price. In short, the exact review model I received, the A135-S4427, is probably the exact model I would myself purchase if I were in the market for a solid notebook that should have no trouble handling general office and multimedia tasks. My only concern, at the outset of this review, was whether or not Vista Home Premium, running the Aero interface, would be hampered by a single gigabyte of RAM. I’m glad to say, with some elaboration below, that performance was always quite good, and that the addition of an inexpensive flash drive to make use of the Vista ReadyBoost feature offered some performance improvement in certain high-stress situations.


Toshiba Satellite A135-S4427 Specs:

Processor: Intel Core Duo T2250 (1.73 GHz/2MB L2 Cache)
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Hard Drive: 120 GB SATA @ 5400RPM
Screen: 15.4" WXGA TruBrite Widescreen (1280 x 800)
Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, Up To 224 MB Shared
RAM: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM @533 MHz (2x512MB)
Optical Drive: DVD SuperMulti Drive (CD/DVD burner)
Battery: 6-cell lithium ion
Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11 a/b/g
Weight: 6 lbs.
Dimensions: 1.47” (H) x 14.2 “ (W) x 10.5" (D)
Ports/Slots: 1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire); 4 Universal Serial Bus (USB 2.0); VGA monitor out port; S-video out; RJ-45 Ethernet LAN; RJ-11 modem; Type I/II PC Card Slot; headphone/speaker jack; microphone; 5-in-1 bridge media adapter supports Secure Digital, Multi Media Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO and xD Picture Card; Secure Digital slot supports SDIO