The new Toshiba Mini NB305 has inherited the Editor’s Choice award for best overall netbook, taking the award from its predecessor the Mini NB205. Although the NB305 hasn’t really changed all that much from the NB205, it is still noteworthy to run through some of the things that have been changed. First of all, they upped the hard drive from a 160 GB to a 250 GB drive. Having a bit more storage on your netbook is something that everyone will enjoy.
Toshiba has decided to use more plastics in their design and they seem to have gotten the percentages right on this one. Most netbooks and laptops that have more plastic in their designs are often fingerprint magnets because of the high glossy cases but Toshiba decided to change it up a bit and use plastics with more textures and shadows to it. This not only makes the Netbook look great to any observer but also lowers the percentage of fingerprints left all over it. Getting rid of unsightly smudges and smears is a huge jump forward.
Though this netbook isn’t too powerful compared to the more recent notebooks that have come onto the market lately, it does sport one of the best user experiences for the keyboard and navigation than just about any other netbook and most bigger laptops. The keyboard is almost a full size keyboard and the reaction for the navigation is excellent. The mouse buttons are easy to use and don’t require finding the sweet spot like on some other models of netbooks. While the screen resolution isn’t as high as other on the market it is good enough for anything you would want to do with this notebook on a 10 inch screen. Overall it’s hard not to find things that you won’t like, maybe a few that you would like to be better, but you can live with those easily enough.
