The M645-S4118X does suffer one glaringly poor design decision. The bright power button light directly under the screen can be truly annoying when you're watching a movie, or just using Skype with the 640 by 480 Webcam. For some reason Toshiba doesn't provide a means of turning it off--covering it with electrical tape works nicely.

On the other hand, you may charge a cell phone off of the port, or play music using a male-to-male stereo cord plugged into the microphone jack while the laptop is asleep. The behavior may be disabled in the BIOS to extend battery life if you wish. We ran our battery tests with these features disabled, as well as the keyboard backlight. In that state, the Satellite M645-S4118X managed a respectable 4 hours, 24 minutes of run time. Not bad at all for a laptop with this kind of horsepower.

It's not going to turn the heads, even in a sedate board room environment, but the Toshiba Satellite M645-S4118X lets you get your work done quicker than most of the high-fashion alternatives. That means you can get on with your life, or if you prefer--wreck havoc on digital opponents with its exceptional gaming abilities.