All good things come to an end

As part of a blogger relations programme from TalkToshiba, I was recently given a Tecra A8 Toshiba laptop to handle for a week or so, test out and finally put down my thoughts on.

And after a week I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, whilst not the lightest or most compact lappy in the world, it’s a good size and of quality build, the sort of build that’ll make sure the only reason you need to get a new laptop is because three years down the road, the spec needs updating, but you’ll always have your backup there.

I took it around to various places, the local coffee shop, even to a cider festival in Wales, to make sure I wasn’t left out of the loop. After pairing it with my N95 it still rocked and I managed to grab my emails. Whilst the spec on the one I had wouldn’t exactly tare up some of the latest graphically heavy games, it did the job for what I needed it to do, and because of the mid-end innards, it kept the weight down to bearable.

Probably the three most important aspects of a laptop, as far as I’m concerned, are the keyboard, battery and the screen, all three of which I’m pleased to say do the job well. In fact, after getting used to the slightly ‘positioned-right’ nature of the keyboard it was a pleasure to type away at, the monitor had a nice contrast and handled even high-definition divx playback to a reasonable degree and the battery lasted for hours, on highest brightness setting.

Anyway, I have to run but, they’re good lappys, if you’re after something that’s mid-end, good build and reliable, I’d recommend them. The only bad thing was the amount of heat it pumped out, making it slightly uncomfortable on the lap after an hour or so, but you tend to get that with most laptops.

I enjoyed the experience, technology allowed me to have a good time and put a smile on my face, which is after-all, the point of reporting on this blog, and I loved the fact that because I am a blogger companies like Toshiba value my opinion and ability to affect people, perhaps more than a magazine or TV advert could. Interesting times, I might talk more on this later on.

More later.