The Toshiba satellite L300D-10F is my first laptop. Out of pure excitement, I bought it in a rush and paid £399.99 for it. Being naive, I assumed that it would just be a great laptop and didn't really look around much. Fortunately, I wasn't disappointed and it was exactly what I expected.

For the price of the laptop it has great specifications. It has 2 GB ram, which I hear is what you need for vista to run perfectly. The more ram you have the quicker your programs will load. It includes a 250 GB hardrive, great for holding lots of music and video. After three months I still have plenty of hardrive space left. It has windows vista home premium, which runs smoothly and is a great version of windows. I would definitely use this operating system again. Finally it has an Athalon 64 X2 dual core processer. I'm not sure whether it is supposed to be better than other processers but the whole laptop runs swiftly and smooth because of it. The processor speed is 1.9 GHz which is fairly good and in the three months I have been using it, I have never had any serious slow spells.

I have to admit that it isn't the most stylish of laptops. When the laptop is closed the silver backing looks great but that is the only thing that does looks stylish. In the end if you want a laptop based on its appearance you should choose another brand, otherwise this is a great laptop for specifications.

The laptop its self has a great build and is very durable, great for someone as clumsy as me. I have indeed dropped this laptop. To my surprise nothing was broken. No smashed screens, cracks or snaps. I'm not saying the laptop is unbreakable but it's definitely fairly sturdy after it survived that drop. Finally, the hinges on the screen are neither too tight nor too loose. Just perfect.

The laptop includes a DVD rewriter drive, webcam, microphone and wireless. I haven't used the DVD rewriter yet but it writes on DVD + R and DVD +RW recordable disks. The webcam is built into the laptop just above the screen, similar to other laptops. It is very useful having a webcam that is so easily accessible and is a great feature. However the basic resolution brings the camera down. The built in microphone is also a great feature. At first I didn't realise I had it as it is cleverly hidden in the keyboard. I only discovered it when someone phoned me on a web based call. Finally the wireless ready functionality saves your favourite networks and connects you automatically as you log on, however I understand this is similar for many laptops. There is a switch at the front of the laptop where you can turn the wireless LAN either on or off.

At first when you buy the laptop, it may require some tweaking. For example there is lots of pre installed programs that will be of no use to you. You may want to uninstall these. There are also programs that activate when the laptop starts. You should disable these as, not only can they be annoying, but it will take your laptop longer to start up.

The laptop features a 15.6" glossy screen which gives a flawless picture. Of course it attracts its fair share of dust and fingerprints but you can't be disappointed by that alone. Overall it is a good size screen that is not too bulky nor to small. This is a great laptop for searching the web, watching videos and playing games. This is because of the excellent ATI Radeon X1250 graphics card.

Another disadvantage with this laptop is the battery life. It was advertised that it would last 2 hours however I'm lucky if it will last 45 minutes. Fortunately this doesn't bother me too much as I usually have the laptop plugged in and charging. You can make the battery last longer by choosing a different power plan. By changing it from high performance to power saver it can make you battery last longer, even then it doesn't last 2 hours. It is strange because by putting it on power saver it is meant to save battery life but affect your computers performance. However it still seems as swift and precise as it usually does. The only difference you notice is that the screen goes slightly dimmer.

All the ports on the laptop include the standard headphones and microphone ports ( 3.5mm), 3 USB ports and a slot for your Ethernet cable if you don't wish to use your wireless. Unfortunately there is no SD card slot but I find the various USB ports very useful.

So my overall thoughts are that it is a great laptop with a few disadvantages. But what laptops don't have problems. This computer has a great operating system, an amazing processor, a generous 250 GB hardrive and 2 GB memory. This gives the laptop a fast and quick response and is well worth its £399.99 price tag.

thanks for reading