Anyone here own a Satellite P305? Anything I should know before I buy?

I've been shopping around for a 17" notebook with dedicated graphics and have narrowed it down to a Toshiba P305 and HP dv7.

Are there any P305 (or even A305) owners here who've experienced any issues or problems with their systems? Care to share your experience, good or bad, before I pull the trigger?

The P305 that I'm interested in has two 250GB hard drives AND the 512mb ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3650 GPU, so I'm a little concerned about heat buildup. I've read that the the HD 3650 is located directly under the touchpad and gets pretty toasty sometimes.

Any input is appreciated! Thanks.

 

Mine is the P305D-s8828. A little different than the one you are looking at. This unit is solid! I had an HP DV9910 for 2 days & exchanged it for the Toshiba mainly because the buttons on the touchpad of the HP were sooooo horrible. Mushy feel & inconsistent function on the left button. I may have kept the HP if I had been using my new Logitech VX Nano mouse instead of the touchpad. This mouse is awsome!!! Otherwise I liked it a lot! Seems that the HP's fan was quiter than the Toshiba. That is the only issue that I have with the Toshiba. Fan seems to run often & occasionally on high with minimal processor activity. Both units use AMD, so an Intel may run cooler, just try to see if you are happy with the fan operation. I know it is hard to hear in the store, but check it out.
Good luck
P.S. I have come to grips with the Toshiba fan noise. I just keep telling myself that I only paid $650 for it!

 

After giving up on my recently-purchased Macbook, I decided to purchase a similarly-sized Windows laptop to take with me on the road. After much investigation, I settled on the Toshiba U405D-S2852.

I liked it so much that two weeks later, I decided to buy a larger laptop to keep on my coffeetable so I could work while watching TV, (I also have two desktops, but wanted the large laptop for convenience.) and opted for the Toshiba P305D-S8818. Circuit City had it at a price I couldn't refuse, and were just burning off stock, so I knew I had to jump on it.

The P305D is awesome. Due to its size, it's more of a desktop replacement for me, but I love it. The screen is great...the colors just pop.

Toshiba puts a bunch of stuff on the computer that you might not want (ie advertising), but if you are like me, you have no problem removing and reconfiguring. Even with only 2GB RAM and Vista Premium, it is lightning fast.

My U405D came pre-configured with Vista Ultimate, and quite frankly, for my purposes, I don't see the difference. The P305D is fast; great looking; and quick to boot up, quick to shut down.

It does get a bit hot around the area of the heatsink on the left-hand side of the machine. The good thing is that it has a great fan and a big heatsink, so it dissipates heat well. To be honest, my fan rarely has to come on, but the machine is a bit hotter than my previous Dell Inspiron (before the Macbook). The Dell did not have great heat dissipation abilities and I ended up with a fried video card TWICE in four years.

The touchpad really doesn't seem to get hot, at all, despite some reports I read. I also investigated the Intel version of both the P305 and the U405, and in the case of the U405, the reviewer said the trackpad became hot. The AMD is supposed to run hotter than the Intel, but reports of heat on the Intel machine indicate that the heat of the AMD should not be a deal-breaker.

It is a great machine. I love it.