Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277 Notebook

Being a desktop replacement system, the Satellite 1905-S277 contains quite a few built in features. As we already mentioned, the front of the notebook is home to the LED and CD-ROM control panels. Moving to the left side of the notebook we find two PCMCIA slots that support two type II or one type III PC cards. Above the PCMCIA slots are the audio controls and outputs. The Satellite 1905-S277 has a dial style volume control as well as microphone and headphone 3.8mm jacks. To the left of these components is the system exhaust port. Located directly in front of the CPU, the exhaust blows across the CPU's heatsink and out here. As one would suspect, the 0.18 micron 1.6GHz Pentium 4 that the Satellite 1905-S277 makes use of gets rather hot. We were able to get the exhaust temperatures up to 126.9 degrees Fahrenheit (52.7 degrees Celsius) while testing.

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Moving to the back of the system we can see that the speaker grilles extend a good amount towards the back. Located directly below the left speaker on the back is another exhaust port. Since airflow passes over the heatsink from right to left, we found that the air out the left vent was typically stronger and hotter than the air out of the rear vent. In fact, we could not even feel any air flow across the rear vent. The next item on the system's back is the video-out port which appears to be capable of outputting to both s-video as well as composite connections via a dongle but none was provided in the box. The port does accept an s-video cable without a hitch, however. To the left of the video-out port is the AC adapter port, followed by a 15-pin VGA-out port, a parallel port, a modem port, and an ethernet network port. Rounding off the back are two USB ports located side by side and a security lock slot.

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The right side of the system holds all the removable media drives. First off is the semi-removable 24X CD-ROM, 4X CD-R and CD-RW, and 6X DVD-ROM combo drive. The reason that this is semi-removable is because one has to remove the memory expansion cover to get to the screw that holds the drive in place. Next to the drive is another vertical USB port, followed by a semi-removable internal 3.5" floppy drive. Again the floppy drive is semi removable because to get it out requires the removal of the hard drive as well as a locking screw at the base of the floppy drive.

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The bottom of the system is home to quite a few expansion slot covers. The rectangular slot in the middle of the front of the Satellite 1905-S277's bottom is the hard drive cover and is easily removed by releasing two Philips head screws. To the right of the hard drive cover is the battery pack which can be released by sliding the lock lever from right to left. Behind the hard drive cover is the memory expansion slot cover. The cover located in the back right corner of the system is home to the CPU. This cover is held in place by two T-6 Torx screws and can only be removed with a T-6 screw driver. Between the memory expansion slot cover and the CPU cover is the fan intake port which is grated to prevent any large objects from getting sucked into the cooling system. With the system running, we were able to get the bottom right side of the Satellite 1905-S277 up to 103.1 degrees Fahrenheit (39.5 Celsius).

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With all the built in components that the Satellite 1905-S277 features, it is not too big of a surprise that the notebook is quite large. The system measures 13.2"x11.7"x2.0" and weighs a backbreaking 8.3 pounds. The Satellite 1905-S277 is certainly a heavy weight when it comes to notebooks, even desktop replacement ones.