Good day, all you GR fans. We got our hands on the new Toshiba Satellite U505 Touchscreen (literally) and here’s a few of our thoughts. My first impression after opening the nicely packaged box was, “holy five stacks of iPads, Batman!”, this thing is pretty thick! Then I realized it had a touchscreen, all kinds of glow in the dark multimedia buttons, and rather largish built in speakers with a snazzy ”Dolby Sound Room” label. “Ah, hah!”, I thought, this must be one of those rare desktop-replacing, skin-scorching multimedia laptops that’s meant to cut all blood flow to your lap. Very cool.

Build quality is excellent, I must say. The laptop body has a nicely textured finish with an almost leathery feel. When you pick it up, it just has that solid heft to it, sorta like picking up a concrete slab; you just know it’s not going to break (easily). The screen hinge is very solid as well–you’re not going to shake, rattle, or roll anything when closing the lid.

Feature-wise this thing is loaded with a very respectable Intel Core i5 processor, 13.3″ widescreen WXGA Touchscreen, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB Hard Drive, an ultra-cool slot-loading DVD SuperMulti Drive, LED backlit keyboard, stereo speakers, webcam, and more.

My recommendation is to plonk it down on a nice, solid desk and leave it there to enjoy the performance of this very capable multimedia-centric laptop. Definitely not for the weak of mind…or lap.

Will keep you posted with updates on the touchscreen usability and performance on Windows 7.

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