Product Reviews

If you want a basic notebook for browsing the internet, sending email and printing your digital photos, then you need only a cheap model.

Toshiba's Satellite L30-113 costs £86 less than our favourite budget notebook, the Aspire 5101AWLMi. This is a significant saving considering the low prices of these products, but we would expect Toshiba to have made some serious economies to achieve this.

The first thing we noticed was its slower performance. Its Intel Celeron M 430 processor runs at a respectable 1.73GHz, but it still performed far slower than the Aspire. This is because the Aspire comes fitted with 1GB of RAM compared to the Satellite's 512MB. Windows Vista benefits massively from having plenty of memory available, and the Satellite really suffered in our 2D benchmarks. This was very noticeable when using the computer for image work, with it struggling to open multiple high-resolution images.

Even if you're undertaking only the most basic of tasks, there's

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a lot more to consider when buying a notebook. The Satellite only has two USB2 ports for plugging in peripherals, which will be quickly filled by input devices, printers, digital cameras or MP3 players, leaving you needing an external hub. The Aspire has three USB2 ports plus a memory card reader, so you can easily access photos from your digital camera.

The anti-glare coating on the screen helps keep down unwanted reflections from office lights or the sun. The Satellite's display isn't terribly bright or vibrant and the Aspire's display does a better job of making your photos and video look good. If you need to work on the move you'd be better off getting Toshiba's A120 notebook, as it has a damage-resistant design and a shock-resistant hard disk.

The Satellite is well built and feels very sturdy. The keyboard is a good size and is fine for shorter documents. The touch pad is very accurate, although the buttons could be bigger.

The Satellite's 60GB hard disk is half the size of the Aspire's. The Satellite also comes with Windows Home Basic, rather than the Premium version used by Acer. This means you miss out on both Windows Media Center and Windows Mobility Center.

We understand that notebooks won't be the biggest priority in everyone's budget. However, we think that the £77 you'll save by buying this notebook can't be justified given its slow performance, lack of ports and small hard disk. The Satellite isn't a bad notebook for the money, but if you want a budget Vista notebook then you'll be far better off with the Aspire.