Things I Love: Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5057

Spoiler Alert: The moral of this story is to understand, and not overpay for, your needs.

In 2010 I moved away from the unsanitary coziness of the college dormitories and the convenience of an on-site computer lab. I also hate(d) the uncomfortable stresspools that are college libraries. I want my offspring to know that Toshiba came to their ancestor's aid in this time of dire need with the $350 C655D-S5057. It was a great solution for me at the time... even if it was rarely great for anyone else, at any other time.

Reviews were underwhelmed with this inexpensive gem. They wanted this imperfect hybrid to either be a smaller, more portable netbook or a more powerful, feature-heavy notebook. My perfect vision would have included a netbook to meet my mobile college-kid needs, and a PC to for my exaggerated  entertainment-multitasking demands at home. What I did have was $400 and a PlayStation 2, so I what I got was this perfect daily function machine.

It's armed with the battery life for a couple classes and enough power for very light (cheap) gaming and "surfing the web" (as we called it in those days). The 15-inch screen and speakers are solid, and the 10-key is wildly useful for special characters and calculations in homework. Its 4 GB ram, 2.4 ghz and 250 GB hard drive were all viable enough back then, with user-exercised care. The "D-S5057" part designates it has an AMD Athlon II Dual Core (2.1 GHz) instead of the Intel Celeron common to most Satellites. It even has the card reader I needed for cheap SD storage and a single VGA-out for the same low-def flat-screen TV I used with my PlayStation 2. In that exact scenario, the C655D-S5057 literally was perfect.

Sure, that's a narrow market. Per critics, it basically did stuff the specs of a netbook into the screen, size and battery of a notebook. I probably should have gotten the Samsung N150 Plus netbook, saving even more while sacrificing very little. Also, in 2014 I spent around $150 on ram, a larger solid state drive and a VGA-to-HDMI dongle.

Hindsight is 20/20, and the end result of my $350(/$500) purchase was nearly seven years of respectable performance and daily function through heavy usage. For that, Toshiba, I thank you.

As for you, my trusty laptop, you are laid to rest for a great cause in this 'Thank You' video I made for my ThanksGaming Day participants.