Toshiba NB305 netbook review & retrospective

I almost bought one of these during the netbook craze of 2008-2010, but instead I got a used ThinkPad X60. Now I finally got an NB305 to see what I was missing.

[secretagentjesus]

100% agree that Office 2003 was the best and still use it to this day.

[ProtoMario]

Netbooks are damn good portible DVD players, low power consumption, head phone jacks, etc.

I owned an ACER one in the army, they work quite well for very basic computer tasks.

From the future, Emulation works amazing on these as well, a mini portable console!

[cryxia]

how many indicator leds you need ?
Toshiba : *Yes*

[DrCassette]

Back when Netbooks first came out, my father got a little obsessed with them. Within the few years of Netbooks being popular, he bought no less than 6 of them! The very first Asus EeePC, then the three follow-up models, the very first Medion Netbook, and finally a late Asus EeePC with Dual Core Processor. He gave the Medion to me after experimenting with it in 2008, and I used it for school and university until he gave one of the 10" EeePCs to me. That one served me well until I got tired of working on that small screen, that's when I got a 13" Dell Latitude laptop. I have since been given some of the netbooks to sell them on Ebay, but there are still a few that remain...

[Chyrosran]

If you want to rub sticky residue off of surfaces, don't use acetone - it readily attacks coatings, laquers, and plastics, and isn't even that good at removing the residue. Use any apolar solvent like petrol, white spirit, turpentine, anything like that. Much friendlier on the surface and much more effective at removing the residue.

Nice video btw :) .

[WaybackTECH]

At least Toshiba ( and some Dell too ) was smart enough to put an access cover on the bottom of their netbook. I like my Acer One, but replacing the hard drive or upgrading the memory involves a complete tear down and removal of the motherboard to do it.

[eladhen]

I have one of these toys (the nb305 n600 with a slightly more powerful atom n550 cpu in it). I bought it 5 years ago and It operated pretty horribly from the start. Several years down the line windows's updates brought it to it's knees, and no reinstallation would help it's crawl. I was about to throw it away before I installed linux (linux mint 17.1 at the time). Now it's again my go-to computer on the road. It's actually a pretty sweet machine considering it had cost me 350$ in 2010, but it's just not built to heft the weight of windows 7 (even in it's crippleware edition).

[UnrealOG]

The io is actually really good all things considered. It would fit well on a modern laptop. Replace vga and charging with USB c and USB 2 with USB 3 and you have solid io. Also, add an hdmi.

[themaritimegirl]

Good review. When I was shopping for a new laptop in 2012, I *really* wanted one of these Toshiba netbooks; in particular the top of the line model, the NB555. It was similar to this, but had an AMD C60 processor (way more CPU and graphics power than the Atom) and a Harman Kardon sound system that was loud and sounded really good. Sadly, they had just discontinued it at the time, and I couldn't find one anywhere. Then right after I ordered the ThinkPad, one of the retailers, who didn't return an inquiry I had sent them weeks ago, finally emailed me saying they had them. Sucks to be them.

[TheComputerGuy]

I have the first generation iPad that was introduced in 2010. It's the worst purchase I've ever made, as they stopped supporting it in 2011 while literally ALL the newer models are still supported today. Anyway, it only has a small mono speaker, but it's loud enough and has a good amount of bass, definitely better than those tinny netbook speakers.

[whyjordie]

I had one of those exact same models and it was my college laptop!! I still have it!

[CapTVchilenaShootingStarMax]

A rule of thumb: if it's got an Atom, it belongs in the trash.

[thomasmacdonough]

After some 6-7 years of first seeing this video, I've put one back in working order. Super nifty little PC, and definitely a looker. Kind of absurd that I'm gawking at a netbook but it just speaks to me.

[thomasmacdonough]

In the process of refurbishing one currently, great way to spend time in quarentine.

[FastGadgets]

Back in 2011 I did some travel out of the country. I had two Asus netbooks that worked great for me with the n450 processor and 2GB of ram. They had 8 hours of battery life, so I could work remotely for the whole day. Nice vid, thanks!

[ultimatesquidgaming]

Merry Christmas! 🎄
Awesome video, I'm watching this from my ASUS EeePC 901! :D

[fakofakoson]

Win7 starter is trash, I had an HP mini1020la with a lesser Atom N270 @ 1.60ghz. only 1GB of DDR3 RAM and a 160GB HDD.

It ran WinXP pro SP3 and then I set up a dual boot with Win8.1 pro, it worked great for what i used it, even some middle range online gaming like Battlefield 1942 and emulation of PSone, Gameboy Advance and DS.

It all depends on what you want to do with the equipment and how you configure it, obviously it will not run triple A games in 2016 but it isnt a paperweight

[inhouseparts]

Great video- you can tell the temperature outside from the crickets chirping..!

[Browningate]

I remember installing the tweak to enable the glass theme back on my Samsung netbook. That thing had 2GB of RAM and it actually didn't drag the system down much. It was totally worth it because of how bland the "non-glass" them in 7 and Vista is, but like the author of the video, I too ultimately upgraded to a tiny ThinkPad (an X200 tablet) as my "ultraportable" and am happier with it, however, the netbook did have unbeatable battery life and portability on its side; it just wasn't very powerful and didn't have enough screen resolution. The only thing I really disagreed with in this video was the whole "ribbon" thing in Office, as I've come to like it, but that's a preference thing more than anything else.

[zzoinks]

It's a neat fact that netbooks helped some people through hard times, providing them with a computer. I never knew that.