17.3" I3 640GB 4GB 3

This is a very fine laptop in every regard except one. I used Toshiba Satellite laptops for years in business, and remember them as excellent machines--I could do just about anything with one of them that I could do with a full-blown desktop, include composing and editing lengthy documents.

Not so with this latest Satellite. It's the keyboard. I don't know what they were thinking--maybe make it look sleek or modern or something--but the keys are perfectly flat and laid out so close together that you practically can't feel any break as you slide across them. It's close to the feel of a continuous flat surface.

A proper keyboard has a reasonable gap between the keys, and the best of them have keys that are slightly convex, so that your fingers slightly depress into the key rather than rest on a flat surface. That makes rapid touch-typing with minimal errors much easier. With this keyboard, it's like trying to touch-type on a cookie sheet.

Other than that, its a sterling machine with an awesome display screen.