Need a Small Business Laptop? Toshiba Delivers

Dual-core power and an eye-catching17.3-inch display are just two reasons to consider the Toshiba Satellite Pro L550. HardwareCentral.com reveals the rest of the details in its hands-on review.

Toshiba has a reputation for making solid notebook computers at reasonable prices, and one of its latest and largest laptops, the Satellite Pro L550, is no exception.

The L550 (model EZ1702) lists for $999, with street prices from $850 to $950. It has sleek lines for a computer of its proportions (10.7 by 16.4 by 1.6 inches), thanks to a manufacturing process called in-mold rolling.

Its sober color scheme may lack the flashiness of some of its competitors, but it's still a handsome machine with its shiny graphite gray shell and "snow silver" interior deck. Keypads come in a choice of black (like our test unit) or gray (like the publicity photo below).

At one time, a notebook of the L550's magnitude would have been classified as a "lovable luggable." But even though the unit weighs seven pounds, it is eminently portable and, unlike its hulking progenitors, can be toted from room to room or from office to home without producing chiropractic problems.

Under the hood is Intel's Core 2 Duo T6670 processor, which was launched in the third quarter of last year. It's a dual-core with 2.2GHz clock speed, an 800MHz front-side bus, and 2MB of Level 2 cache. System memory is 4GB of DDR2, expandable to 8GB.

Despite the relatively robust processor and generous amount of memory, the L550's performance running Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) was only adequate, not peppy; there always seemed to be a smidgen of latency between the launching of some applications and appearance of program windows. On the other hand, multimedia applications — DVD movies and music CDs — performed well.

Read the complete Toshiba Satellite Pro L550 review