HOT PRODUCT - Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708

The high-end Toshiba Qosmio X305 has lots of style and even more power, but this laptop could use a more practical physical design.

Even for a desktop replacement laptop--a category filled with oversize eye-grabbers like the HP HDX18 and the Alienware m17--Toshiba's Qosmio X350-Q708 is an extrovert. A flaming red beast of a machine, the X350-Q708 packs a lot of cutting-edge hardware, but some of the design decisions it incorporates are dubious.

The X305-Q708 comes in a black and red case with reflective flames, glowing red LEDs, and lots of curves. The brash design won't appeal to everyone, but it adequately frames a generous array of ports, including three USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA port (which doubles as a fourth USB 2.0 port), an Express Card 54 slot, and a four-pin FireWire port. You also get a modem port (tucked away beneath a hard-to-open plastic port cover), a multiformat flash card reader, and built-in support for a wireless USB device. On the video front, the Qosmio X305-Q708 provides VGA, HDMI, and DisplayPort outputs. Since this pricey laptop fully supports 1080p resolution when outputting video to an external monitor, it's a shame that there isn't a Blu-ray drive.

This $4200 laptop packs a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme processor with four CPU cores; 4GB of RAM; and two nVidia GeForce 9800M GTS video cards, each with 512MB of RAM, set up in SLI mode. In addition to running in standard SLI graphics mode, the Qosmio X305-Q708 lets you dial down to use the integrated GeForce 9400M graphics; this increases the laptop's battery life (which is just 1 hour, 24 minutes in full graphics mode) and decreases its heat and noise. The laptop measures 16.2 by 12.10 by 2.5 inches and weighs 12.4 pounds with the power brick in place. Source: PC WORLD..