We were never very fond of latest glossy plastic Toshiba notebooks but when you get a Toshiba Satellite A660-14C 16 inch Notebook that features Blu-ray RE drive, 512 MB nVidia GeForce 310M, 2.13 GHz Intel Core i3 and 4GB RAM all for under £700 we can forgive the glossyness.

Toshiba also put her models through new Intel Core i Series treatment recently. One of the outcomes is the new 13.3 inch portable notebook Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX. We always were fans of Toshiba notebooks but recently not as much as they decided to use an abundance of glossy plastics all over their notebooks including the keyboard. Unfortunately the Toshiba Satellite U500 continues the trend of glossiness. Apart from that we absolutely love the design of the chassis. Rory Reid put the Toshiba Satellite U500-1EX to the test and found out that for its size is quite heavy and its touch-sensitive screen spoils the image quality of the screen. It doesn’t sound to good to us. Personally we never got the point of having a touchscreen in a notebook when mouse can do everything much faster and cleaner (no fingerprints on the screen). Read the full story to found out more.

Yesterday we posted review on the 11.6 inch Toshiba Satellite T110-10R Intel CULV notebook and today its bigger 13.3 inch brother is in the spotlight. It’s pretty much the same machine running the disappointing Intel Core SU2700 single core processor but in a slightly bigger case. We had problems getting the 11.6 inch single core notebook so we have even bigger problems getting a bigger one and Andy Vandervell at TrustedReviews that posted the review somewhat agrees with us as the overall rating given to the Toshiba Satellite T130-11H 13.3 inch Intel CULV Notebook is 5/10. Back to the drawing board Toshiba. And while you are at it replace the glossy plastic palm rest as it is a fingerprint magnet like the world has never seen.

Felix Sold at NotebookCheck posted a review on the Toshiba Satellite T110-10R 11.6 inch Intel CULV Notebook. He thinks the Toshiba Satellite T110-10R looks good and is a well built notebook. The hardware isn’t anything to shout about as it features a single core Intel CULV SU2700 1.3 GHz but as the result of this it can achieve a 10 hour battery life. We thinks that if one is happy enough with a single core CPU should go for a netbook so manufacturers should really only pack dual core CPUs in notebooks. This is 2010 so we all like and need multi-tasking. Hopefully Toshiba will realise that and in update the T110 series with a dual core as deserved by otherwise this attractive notebook.

It looks like that AMD isn’t giving up the fight with Intel in the portable notebook market even though most manufacturers are releasing Intel models only.  Jerry Jackson at NotebookReview posted a review on the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1324 13.3 inch AMD Notebook. He thinks that in comparison to the Intel powered Toshiba Satellite T135 delivers the AMD powered Toshiba Satellite 135D brings better performance including better integrated graphics in form of ATI Radeon HD3200 but shorter battery life of  ”only” 5.5 hours compared to the Intel powered T135’s 8 hours and at the bottom line also note that the AMD version is $100 cheaper which isn’t bad. All and all it’s pretty much what we expected as the Intel CULV in combination with Intel GMA 4500MHD is no match for the AMD Turion Neo X2 and ATI Radeon HD3200. But as usually more power means shorter battery life but to be honest we think that 5.5 hour battery life is pretty adequate. Enough of chit-chat hit the link for full review.

Kevin O’Brien at NotebookReview posted a review on the Toshiba Satellite E205 14 inch Intel Core i5 Notebook with Intel Wireless Display. He thinks the Toshiba Satellite E205 is a really nice 14 inch consumer notebook as it features modern blue design, Intel Wireless Display technology for wireless video streaming to your TV and Intel Core i5.

Toshiba Satellite E205 specifications:
- 14 inch LED backlit glossy screen (1366 x 768 px)
- 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium
- Intel Core i5-430M 2.26GHz
- 4GB DDR3 RAM
- 500 GB 5400rpm hard drive
- Slot loading DVD+/-RW optical drive
- WiFi a/g/n, Intel Wireless Display
- Intel GMA HD integrated graphics
- 5800mAh 6-cell battery
- Size (W x D x H) 13.7 x 9.57 x 1.22 inch, Weight 5lbs 2.4oz
- RRP $899
- 2 year warranty

If you love big, heavy and powerful multimedia notebooks you will probably love (hey it’s Valentines soon) the Toshiba Qosmio X500-10T 18.4 inch multimedia notebook with Intel Core i7. Ardjuna Seghers at TrustedReviews thinks the Toshiba Qosmio X500-10T is overall well-built and well-featured notebook but unfortunately it lets down with just-about-average dedicated nVidia GeForce GTS 250M graphics and the abundance of the glossy plastic even on the keyboard. We couldn’t agree more on the plastics. What’s up with that Toshiba? Do you guys really think that everyone wants to have fingerprints all over their notebooks?