I'm a computer nerd of old, but lately I just like to use them and not try to fix them or set them up. Back in the days of early laptops, in the 90s, I was not a big fan of Toshiba. This time around I figured why not, because it has better than the average specifications compared to the Sony, HP, Dell, etc. More memory, faster processor, equals faster computer.This thing has full size keyboard, large screen, but still super light. For the price, I really don't think that there is a way to beat it.
We have only had it for a month, but in that time I think I have figured out that this will do just fine.
Buy Toshiba Satellite U945-S4380 14.0-Inch Ultrabook (Ice Blue with Fusion Lattice) Now
Great ultrabook for the price. I not get a chance to do too much comparison before I bought this. This is extremely fast and reliable. However can't say the same thing about Windows 8... Pretty annoying almost "android" wannabe features.The keyboard on this laptop requires a bit getting used as it is pretty slim but you'll get used to it within a few days use.
The sound on this is not great but that is not surprising on an ultrabook. You'd need external speakers if you want to listen to music on this. I use Skype frequently so feedback I get from the other side is very clear voice and picture.
Really light and I find myself using this versus my tablet these days because of the keyboard. Hope this helps!What I had in mind for a laptop was something lightweight but with a full-sized keyboard, with a fair amount of storage space and a good battery life (as my old laptop no longer lasted through a class period of note-taking). I didn't particularly care that it be fast, as the 6-year-old, lower-end laptop it was replacing was performing just fine for my needs. Even so, I think I can tell that this one runs faster (although it's also configured differently).
As far as hardware is concerned:
I like the look and feel of the laptop, and it is light-weight without feeling at all flimsy. It is blue (as advertised), but the color is very subtle. In fact, I only notice that it's blue when I compare it to an actually gray laptop, and otherwise my mind is perfectly willing to believe that it's the gray I wanted.
Also as advertised, it has no CD drive. Just a heads-up reminder.
The keyboard is slightly too spring-loaded for my taste, so that it's hard to tell by feel whether you've pressed a key down all the way.
The screen only tilts back about 45 degrees past vertical (rather than the 90 that my last laptop had, so that it could lie open flat on a table).
The power cord sticks straight out the side, which makes me feel like I'm going to wear it out very quickly by bending it back. If I do wear it out, I'm sure it's possible to get a replacement one with a bend in it (for instance, the power cord from my old laptop has a bend and seems to be compatible, despite their different manufacturers).
The speakers are underneath the laptop on the sides, which makes the sound a little muffled if you've got the laptop on a soft surface. The sound quality isn't as good as I might have hoped, but it's fine for most of my purposes. If you want high-quality sound, use external speakers or headphones.
The battery lasts about 4.5 hours of low-key use (wireless and word-processing, but no games or media).
I, like one of the reviewers above, installed Linux. Again, UEFI makes it not obvious how to boot and install from a live USB, but turning it off helps. The Linux installer didn't recognize the Windows installation to set up dual-boot using grub (possibly because it was looking on the wrong hard drive?), but I've got it set up with Linux booting from the SSD and Windows booting from the main hard drive, so I can tell it which one to use by telling the BIOS which hard drive to boot from. The goal was to have my main OS running from the SSD so as to optimize boot time and performance, and things seem to open at a pretty peppy pace, but I can't say whether that's why.
I've mostly been using Linux Mint, but Windows 8 works fine, as far as I can tell. As in the previous review, the Mint installation basically worked out-of-the-box, with a few fairly minor exceptions:
I turned off the function-key-swapping mentioned in the previous Linux review (because as mentioned there they don't all work correctly in Linux), and just set Linux to recognize the F-keys as shortcuts for the things they're supposed to do.
I find that the mouse is a somewhat bigger issue in Linux. The mouse buttons are part of the trackpad (in the configuration Linux refers to as a 'clickpad'), although they are subtly delineated on the trackpad itself. Almost everything (including multitouch and multiclick) works as intended by default, but if you rest your thumb on the mouse button (as if ready to click) and then try to move the mouse the driver interprets it as some sort of multitouch gesture and either scrolls or doesn't do anything at all. If the button is actually held down, it ignores the finger holding it down, as it should, so it is possible to click and drag. Resting a finger on the mouse button doesn't interfere with mouse movement in Windows, so I figure it's something the Linux driver-makers haven't quite figured out yet. I've got tap-to-click turned on, so I don't actually need to use the mouse buttons much, but an actual mouse button is useful for dragging cross-screen, where it's nice to be able to pick up your finger in order to continue moving the pointer when you get to the edge of the track pad. If you can't rest your thumb on the trackpad and use the mouse, it's annoying to have to move your thumb onto the pad just to click and drag, and then off again (and it also makes it hard to position the mouse for a click). Turning on locked drags makes dragging without mouse buttons less of a pain, but I'd still like to be able to use the mouse button more easily.
It's not clear to me whether sleep/hibernate/whatever-you-want-to-call-it works correctly from Linux. It certainly blanks the screen, but sometimes the battery runs down anyway, and sometimes the laptop turns off while it's supposed to be asleep even if the battery still has juice. I haven't figured out why.
I know I've mentioned more negatives than positives so far, but I'm actually quite pleased with this laptop. At $570 it was a little more expensive than some other things I saw listed with similar specs, but those all turned out not to be actually available for purchase anywhere I could find.
--Edit--
After about two months of use, the LCD display backlight stopped working (apparently an issue with the connecting cable). With the laptop still under warranty, I was able to get the hardware issue fixed free of charge (except for $25 to ship to the repair depot), but dealing with the Toshiba warranty process was a pain, to say the least, and was an experience I would not want to repeat.
On the other hand, switching back to my old laptop for a month really helped me to see how much faster this one runs.
Want Toshiba Satellite U945-S4380 14.0-Inch Ultrabook (Ice Blue with Fusion Lattice) Discount?
Maybe this is just bad luck. But we ordered a new model. It didn't turn on. Two hours with Toshiba troubleshooting. Not very helpful, despite that the serial # HAD ALREADY BEEN REGISTERED. Amazon, however, seemed genuinely embarrassed and sent us a new one within 24 hours.The new one lasted about three hours. Windows 8 problem? Toshiba problem? Frankly, don't give a damn at this moment. After four days of frustration, we are out $30 in shipping fees after returning two defective (supposedly) brand new Toshiba U-945 series laptops.
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