TOSHIBA U845W-S414 14.4" Ultrabook

Pros: It is an acceptable notebook for the price that I paid for it on Newegg (810 shipped). Machine is fast with core i7 dual core. 256GB mSata SSD is fast. Build quality is very good (except for the lcd quality). 3 USB ports and SD card reader are pluses. Battery life is around 5-6 hours under normal use. Weird screen resolution is good. Keyboard is not as good as older generation Thinkpads but the keyboard backlight is good. Wideness of the laptop is equal to a 15.6 inch laptop but the depth is much less. It is also somewhat thin for a regular notebook but not for a ultrabook.

Cons: LCD screen view angle is horrible. It is also reflective. I am a Thinkpad user for over 9 years. My main laptop is W520 which also has a TN panel. However there is noticeable quality difference between this TN and Thinkpad's TN. If the LCD was better this laptop would get a 5 egg review.

Other Thoughts: Overall it deserves 4 over 5 eggs for the price. This is my first Toshiba.

Pros: Light weight. Quick Startup.

Cons: Started missing keyboard hits within a couple of months. The widescreen is good for movies but clunky for other apps. Overall it's just not easy to use and of course the keyboard issue a game ender. I have to tote around a wireless keyboard now in case I need to do a lot of typing and even trying to browse teh web is painful with the keyboard issues.

Pros: *FAST - SSD, i7
*Long battery life - 7-8 hrs real world for my usage (NOT games or videos - mostly writing, programming, internet)
*Reasonably light
*Short depth (for me, I expect to use this on flights and it's only .4 inches deeper than my netbook and my netbook fits well).

Cons: *NOT gigabit on the wired networking
*Only one DIMM slot (2 GB soldered on the mainboard).
*No TPM (many may not care about this - I'd like the security).

Other Thoughts: Odd that with a wide screen they chose to embed speakers rather than have a numeric keypad.
Odd screen resolution. I like high resolution screens and this is an interesting mix of high and standard. Given my use, greater height wouldn't have worked unless they could have improved the pixel density.
Would have been nice if it was a touch screen... the wide screen works with Win8 well... but would be SOOO Much better if it had a touch screen and Win8.

Still, for my purposes, I think this work well for me - specifically travel and airplane use.

Pros: The screen is great for business, I do a lot of data entry for work so I thought it would be great for that and I was correct. Video also looks fantastic on it. I pretty much live out of a laptop and a hotel room, this one is pretty good. The feel of it is that of a well built machine, it's light, it looks good. Great sound out of the speakers as well.

Cons: The keyboard needs work, you have to hit the keys "hard" to get them to work, I hope that they loosen up after a while. It really needs a 10key on it, the speakers eat up a lot of room, the sacrifices we make sometimes. The trackpad is going to take some getting used to.

Other Thoughts: Surfing the web on this machine is a little different, lots of blank space on the sides. This machine is designed more for playing movies than business, but it is nice to have the widescreen to get two documents open at once for comparison. The keyboard needs a lot of work, the buttons feel great, but I can't keep hammering on this thing to get the keys to register. I will update again later.

Pros: Bought two of these as small business laptops. Fast machine with good keyboard, good battery life so far. Widescreen video is good for spreadsheets.

Cons: HDMI digital outboard video not compatible with VGA projectors. An outboard scan converter is required, and even then may pose problems with resolution. 1792 x 768 resolution is wider than 16:9 and does not match much of anything. Remote desktops have black side borders.

Other Thoughts: The size matches the screen resolution, long and narrow.
The fact that the outboard video is HDMI means this machine cannot be used for presentations.

Pros: The screen... it's... 2:33, basically in scope ratio.

I both love it and wonder "why"? How many people out there are watching scope films like 300, on their laptops, often enough that a scope screen would be preferred to a 16:9 or 16:10 screen? There are comparatively not that many films in scope ratio.

Cons: I don't own this confusing, amazing product.

Other Thoughts: I guess it's really the future.