I bought this machine to replace my sony vaio pcg-grz630 that had some sort of unfixable issue that caused it to turn off and then only turn back on occasionally if you held your breath and tossed salt over your left shoulder while saying chants to the old-gods. My experience with Sony support was the stuff of nightmares. I never did talk to anyone who could give me any answers despite hours spent in frustration. My vaio was a "better" machine if you just look at the specs. It had a bigger hard-drive, more memory, was faster, and more expensive, but my toshiba outperforms it. Here's how:
1. When I play dvds everything is smooth. With my vaio, I had to turn the screen specs all the way down in order to get it sort of smooth
2. The battery lasts forever and the power management settings are easy as pie and very relavant. ie. dvd playback, presentation, long life, etc. I live in Florida and during all the hurricane power outtages we watched dvds on my laptop. It charged quickly in the car and would play nearly 2 entire movies before needing a charge. I could use my sapphion external battery and charge it in the car and have continious laptop use with the power out. The vaio used so much power that my external battery would not work with it and on airplane rides, had such short life that I couldn't even watch a movie if I started with a full charge. Frustrating.
3. All laptops get hot...fact of life. If you want a cool laptop, don't turn the thing on, but this one has little feet that keep it up off of surfaces a little and it doesn't get as hot as that vaio did, not by a long shot. If you are worried about generating too much heat, for instance if you are outside on a hot summer day, there are power settings that can minimize the problem.
4. The vaio had a 2.4 gig processor, the toshiba a 1.5, but I can't seem to tell the difference, not even when I use my demanding statistics software.
5. This baby is light and thin and very sexy looking.
6. Best built in laptop speakers I ever heard.
7. That volume wheel on the front is just plain handy
8. Built in wireless with a handy little switch for turning it on and off in case you aren't using it and want to conserve power.
9. the secure digital slot is awesome. I have a camera, an mp3 player, and a pda that also use sd.
10. An IR port. I can hotsync my pda wirelessly without having to deal with the configuration nightmare that is bluetooth. IR is a bit slow for an initial hotsync...I recommend the wire for that, but for the frequent calendar, notes, memos, address book hotsyncs, it is perfect.
11. This is a big one for me...there is a number you can call if you have questions or problems with your computer. Sony goes to a lot of trouble to make themselves hard to get ahold of. I will never purchase another sony product as long as I live no matter how great it is for that reason alone. When you are writing a thesis and you have deadlines and your computer screws up, you don't need the crap they put you through. Toshiba provides you with stickers with phone numbers on them for you to put on the bottom of your computer.

The downside--2 of the 3 usb ports are in an unfortunate location. They are on the right side toward the front, which means that if you have limited space and a usb mouse, the 2 front ports put wires right where you want your usb mouse or wacom pad or number pad to sit. I usually plug my targus hub into the rearmost port (also on the right side, but away from the other 2 all the way in the back) and plug everything into it to avoid this frustration.

Fan is bit too noisy. You can hear it start and stop. May be thats why this laptop has HK speakers (although the speakers can be better!). Laptop becomes very hot if used for more than 15-20 mins. I ordered one from Amazon. It arrived after a week, but with some dents on the topside. So I am returning the product back to Amazon. The design is great! It looks stylish (looks better than Thinkpad), not very heavy (~6 lbs), awesome screen!
A huge harddrive (60GB), good memory (512 MB RAM) but no DVD-RW drive, which is ok for me, since it has CD-RW. For a student like me, who does only weekend travels, this laptop is just perfect, except the NOISY fan, which is really irritating sometimes. May be Toshiba should supply some earplugs with this model!

Toshiba Satellite M35-S320 doesn't dissapoint me at all. Centrino really works, allowing me to keep on working for hours. The battery can last up to 3.5 hrs and it can work well despite the heat that is building up!! have fun watching movies and playing games!!! the only bad thing: the volume is too soft whille watching movie and a bit too big and heavy!!!

It was time to upgrade and I thought I wanted one of those mini laptops, you know the ones so small they don't even have an optical drive. Well I found one, the sony vaio v505, that did. However I ended up going for the toshiba machine because I realized that I would be using it as much or more at a central site than on the road. I am in med school and travel to different cities for weeks at a time for rotations. I need the portability of a laptop, but like the convenience of something nice to look at, enter the widescreeen. In a word it is magnificent. The notebook itself is very thin and although you feel the weight in your bag, it is not cumbersome. The things I like best about this laptop are its screen, sleek look, but more importantly great processor speed and good battery life. The utility config free is great and makes it a snap to connect to the internet, truly config free. The wifi is great too, my first run-in with them so no basis for comparison. I am rarely somewhere that I don't have an outlet, funny how most hospitals need electricity, so I carry the power cord, I wish they made a more portable version, and my travel mouse, I hate touch pads. The sound from the built in speakers is good, they don't sound tinny and don't break up at louder volumes, but don't forget they are less than an inch in diameter.

I do have a list of nit picky negatives, it's just the way my mind works, and I am also very wary of a review that has no negatives. First it could be lighter, but you could say that about any laptop. Secondly, I wish there were more usb ports, it has 3 all on the right side. You can buy one of those port splitters, but again its a laptop and too much bulk gets you away from the reason you bought one in the first place. Next, the IR port is on the front, and while I haven't needed to use it for a printer it seems an odd place to put it. Probably on either side near the back would be better. Finally, it doesn't come with Office 2003, you can buy it for $149, but then the value for the system comes down a little bit.

Overall, this computer is a do-it-all all-star. If you want to play games it handles them with ease, if you want to watch movies the widescreen is unusually good at it, if you want to write a research paper and have the accompanying PP presentation on the effects of lispro on gestational diabetes you can do that too. It works on the road and as a desktop too. I am very happy with it and am glad I went big!

When it was time to replace my old Gateway desktop, I began the task of researching brands and products. As another reviewer said, I was drawn to Toshiba by their low repair history. I had horrible experience with resolution of any issue using Gateway support (their advice was always uninstall everything and see if it works), and immediately knocked them off my list. My old IBM laptop is also extinct and parts are so expensive ($250 for a battery???) so they were off the list as well.

I am very happy with this computer. I have eliminated my desktop and gained a better display, larger hard drive and overall great product.