Toshiba Satellite M10, M15 series laptops: 4 models in all - M10-S405, M10-S406, M15-S405, M15-S406. They're all the same. Based on Intel Centrino technology, WiFi, USB 2.0, SD card, DVD/CD-RW, 40G hard drive, Dual pointing devices (touchpad and pointing stick), and Harmon Kardon sound (speakers). Dark blue top, black shoes. Mid sized (about 6.7 lbs), with rather large batteries.
The good: these guys are handsome, and the Harmon Kardon sound is rich and ... great. Pretty fast, too. The built-in WiFi is the 802.11b variety, but it's decently fast. 15" XGA screens are nice and brite and easy to read. A separate video card with dedicated video memory makes this computer feel even faster. Best of all, this is a Toshiba Toshiba (vs. one of 'em Chinese Toshiba's) - so everything is ... predictably Toshiba-ish.
The bad: The dark blue top scratches easily, and the areas around the keyboard and touchpad are nigh impossible to keep clean (too many grooves and gutters where foreign objects can hide). So .... these are for the clean-kept adults - if you're the type who eats pizza and play with your computer, you're doomed to never have a clean computer. Last year, I received one that was so hopelessly dirty, I went to an outdoor shower with it and shampoo'd man and machine together.
Trouble spots: the case around this laptop is rather flimsy, and the speaker covers are prone to breaking; electronics wise, the troublespots are memory sockets and sound card socket. Hinges are prone to breaking, too.
Tip of the day: Don't fuss if you have a bad memory socket - the upper socket tends to go bad because of cold soldering, but the lower socket is rock solid. You can put max RAM on one socket alone - so even if the upper socket is bad, so what? Put a 1G chip on the lower socket and be done with it.
Overall, I like this one. And I'd buy it without giving it a thought. If you're buying one second hand, make sure you ask questions about ... its trouble spots, or better yet, buy it complete and running, and DON'T fall for the partial machines.
One last bit of info added Feb 2012: I mentioned these things are prone to having bad memory sockets - I should've said memory socket (the upper socket). Since max RAM (1GB) can be achieved in any one socket, a bad upper memory socket shouldn't be too much of a problem at all - just don't use it. The symptoms are usually BSOD (memory will be recognized by the BIOS, but it'll crash while OS or Windows is loading).
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