The Top Features Of The Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310

The number one best thing about the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 is its battery life. Toshiba claims it gets 11 hours, but you can realistically expect about 9 hours—that’s still plenty of time. The Toshiba Mini NB305-N410BL also promised 11 hours battery life and it is possible in certain circumstances. You could use it all day without having to fight your coworkers or fellow students for the one power socket in the room. Heck, with 9 hours of battery, you can just stop carrying around the charging cord—just charge it at night and pick it up in the morning. The Apple MacBook Pro MC374LL has a 10 hour battery life.

What makes this long battery life possible is the Intel N450 Atom Processor. Now, the Atom-series processors aren’t Intel’s fastest, but they use very little electricity and run very cool, so this netbook won’t burn your lap. Plus the processor in the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 runs at 1.66 GHz, which fast enough to do almost anything—watch videos online at YouTube or Hulu, play most games, surf the Web faster than on your cell phone, and run the full versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Software Included With The Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310

The Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 comes with Microsoft Windows XP. It isn’t Microsoft’s latest operating system, but it might be Microsoft’s greatest. And that’s not just my opinion—in February 2011 Windows XP was still the most popular operating system in the world with 44.2 percent of all Web traffic coming from Windows XP systems. It’s more popular than Windows 7 (32.2 percent) and Windows Vista (8.3 percent) combined.

Windows XP is a great choice for a netbook system because it doesn’t include all of the bloat that made it into Windows Vista and Windows 7—things like the fancy Aero interface, annoying pop-ups, and the silly shake mode (as if people can’t click the old “show desktop” button). Thanks to Windows XP’s enduring popularity, all common desktop software still works for it, including Microsoft products like Microsoft Office.

Toshiba also pre-loads onto the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 a lot of the software you’d probably install yourself including Norton Internet Security, Microsoft Works, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flash, and Oracle Java.

Other Features Of The Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310

Pre-installed is 1 GB of computer memory (RAM) which lets you effectively multitask. One great thing you can do with all of that memory is open tons of tabs in your Web browser without slowing down your Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310. You can also pre-load more video from sites like YouTube so that they play without skipping.

Talking about video, the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 comes with an Intel graphics chipset, which is one of the most stable graphics chipsets in the business. It plays videos and games without freezing or crashing so you can enjoy your multimedia experience in peace.

Students, salespeople, and everyone else who use their computers to give presentations will love the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310’s built-in VGA output which lets you connect to any computer projector. Imagine carrying your 2.6-pound netbook from sales call to sales call without any extra cords or hassle.

Plus you can store plenty of information on your netbook—it comes with a 160 GB disk drive, which is much bigger than the SD-card based disk drives in cheaper netbooks. In 160 GB, you can store an almost unlimited number of documents or pictures—even about 70 full-length movies for the road.

It’s The Little Things That Count On The Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310

The Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 isn’t just your basic bargain netbook—it also includes several nice additional features that add to its already incredible value, starting with a webcam. Webcams used to be an option, but with the advent of Skype and FaceTime, they’re practically a necessity in today’s school and business cultures. In fact, many distance-learning courses require checking into class using a webcam. Of course, you can also use the webcam built into the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310 to simply Skype video chat with Grandma.

A multi-touch capable touchpad is also included with the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310. It can significantly boost your productivity, making the annoying absence of a “real” mouse a non-issue. With multi-touch, you can manipulate photos, control your Web browser, and perform other tasks just by placing two fingers on the touchpad in particular ways.

If you take pictures with your digital camera or you just want to expand your available disk space, you’ll like the Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310’s built-in Secure Digital (SD) card reader. Just remove the SD card from your camera and insert it into the drive—a folder containing your pictures will appear on the desktop almost immediately. You can also place a more traditional USB flash drive in one of the three provided USB ports.

And, if you want fast Internet, you’ll be happy Toshiba included a card supporting the latest Wireless-N standard which allows you to transfer up to 80 MB a second—that’s enough speed to copy a movie-length DVD to your netbook in less than 52 seconds. Wireless-N can also reduce your latency, making Web pages and emails load faster, giving you the best possible experience on your Toshiba Mini 300 Series NB305-N310.