The build quality is top notch. It feels as good as it looks. There is no flex at all, anywhere. I believe that this laptop will last a very long time. Everything seems to fit exactly where it's supposed to, no clicks or clacks whatsoever. Excellent ratio price-to-performance.Pros:
Great quality build
Excellent 17" screen
Quality HDD with plenty of space
Core 2 Duo processor
Not bad battery life (considering the power and size of the notebook)
Cons:
Keyboard takes some getting used to
HDD could have been 5400rpm
Ram should have been 667 MHz.
All this cannot be said though without noting a few the annoyances with this notebook. As was stated by other reviewers, the keyboard is definitely takes some getting use to especially with the tiny period key and right shift key. But, in my opinion, having a keypad and the right hand side compensates for this.
The finger print scanner, while an excellent time saving function, quite often doesn't work and reads (Bad Quality) when attempting to scan. Because it uses heat spots to map your fingerprint, the accuracy tends to decrease as your laptop heats up from prolonged use.
Finally, by far the most annoying thing with this laptop is the fan. I've read other reviews were people have actually returned there notebooks because of the fan. It's not that it's necessarily loud, it's that it turns on for 1/2 a second then off again only to repeat the process 5 seconds later. So you constantly have a fan turning off and on, off and on, off and on. If you are in a quiet setting, it can drive you insane. I've attempted to see if there is a firmware fix for the MB through Toshiba, but to no avail *UPDATE FIX NOW AVAILABLE SEE BELOW. As long as I have some background noise and am not working in total silence, it's livable.
All in all, if you can find this notebook on sale it is a fantastic bargain if you can get around the few minor annoyances.
*Update 10/12/09*
I felt I should add to this review, seeing that when you search for the firmware/fan problem this page comes up. I wanted to update my review to notify everyone that firmware update was released in 02/09 that fixes the annoying fan issue stated above. The BIOS update is version 4.70 which is available for download off Toshiba's page:
There is also an update to the Fingerprint Utility which also solves the fingerprint reader problems I stated above as well. Now with both of these issues fixed, this laptop continues to serve me well and is very livable with the normal fan speed.I bought this shortly after I went out on my own contract programming. I liked the bigger screen because it was replacing my desktop. So far I've been extremely pleased with it, aside from the keyboard. I use it many hours every day, travel with it regularly, work at home and at various coffee shops, etc.
The screen is excellent and plenty bright even on battery. After a year the battery still gets about the same amount of time as it did originally around two hours under normal use. I am usually on AC.
The only thing I am unhappy with is the keyboard. If you have to type a lot and will be depending on the unit's keyboard, I must recommend that you pick a different machine. I can't understand what they were thinking when they designed this -it is almost like the keyboard was an afterthought. The right shift key, the slash, and the period (not to mention the arrow keys) are so small that you may wear out the backspace key before its time. I can't give you too much information on what else you will run in to I carry a full size USB keyboard in my bag, which I planned to do anyway as I am not much for laptop keyboards anyway. This setup works out great for me. If the keyboard is not an issue for you, I highly recommend this machine.
Some of the other features I don't use as much: the fingerprint reader is a neat gadget and it works well enough once you get used to it, and get the method down, but it was just something to mess with for me. I don't currently use it.
It has plenty of USB ports, a card reader port, which handles SD (I was delighted to discover when I needed it) and some others. An ample hard drive (160GB) and 2 Gig of memory (this was must for me; I wanted it to handle the applications I was running smoothly, and that was about the max you could find in an out-of-the-box machine at the time). The built-in wireless card works great, it has a firewire port, dvd writer/everything drive that works great. And finally the price seems very good for a machine like this with durability that I trust.
WHY TOSHIBA?
about 6 years ago I did some research which gave me the impression that toshibas, though a bit heavier, had outstanding durability. My first one was (still is) fantastic. I am still running it non-stop on my network, but I needed more memory/speed/disk space. In between my wife bought one which as performed exceptionally as well. I have not been disappointed in any of my Toshibas. The keyboards on the other two were fine, by the way. As far as personal experience, I've seen way too many Dells fail first hand (including one of ours). As far as other brands, I don't have first hand experience, but few looked as good as Toshibas when I researched them, and none for the price.Considering all the planned obsolescence and the fact how fast are the new models brought to the market and then replaced with the "newer better" versions, I was surprised to see this laptop still being sold.
I have owned it almost 3.5 years by now and have sort of mixed feelings about it.
It definitely is powerful unit with plenty of storage and high enough processor speed, and I have used it instead of desktop all this time, and have, of course, grown attached to it and rely on it heavily. Even though the above factors (storage and speed, and reasonable reliability) never were an issue, when there is time for me to go and buy new computer, it will NOT be Toshiba again.
Here are the (3 main) reasons why:
1.
The CD drive has not been working properly for a very long time.
It still plays cds and dvds, and I can use it to import songs in iTunes with no problem.
However I have not been able to burn music CDs and have them come out right.
I have several software programs available, and have tried all (three) of them with the same dismal result.
Each time the CD would not work properly and started skipping and stopping around second or third song, no matter what CD player it was played on (and I tried several CD players to make sure).
Previously I have owned HP laptop, and the CD music burning was never an issue, and it always worked right. Not so with this model.
Frankly, it is not much of a problem now, as I have not been listening to CDs for a while (thanks to iPods :), but back about 3 yrs ago I needed to burn music mixes on the CDs partly for my job and partly for my family, and it was a major problem, that I could not do it on this computer.
2.
The other, lot bigger and infinitely more annoying problem is the fan issue.
From reading the reviews on other Toshiba laptops, this does not by far seem to be limited to just this particular model, but to other Toshibas as well.
What I mean by that is the constant rapid outbursts, when the fan kicks in high gear, runs pretty loud for several seconds and stops... and the whole process repeats over and over till it drives you nuts... almost like a chinese torture, annoying, crazy-making, chipping away at you, and you cannot make it stop or get away from it.
One thing is dealing with noisy fan, but it would be far more tolerable, if it ran constantly for awhile, then stopped, and was done with it.
The only way to avoid this incessant on-and-off is to really put only minimal strain on the CPU and to not run too many programs at a time... which of course could be done, but in the big picture it is completely unacceptable having to deal with something like this in the first place.
3.
Another REALLY big thing are the missing parts of the screen.
Not much more than a year after I bought it, about 1.5 inch wide blank white stripe popped up on the screen, running vertically, covering all the data underneath... it was distracting and unappealing, but it was positioned in a way, that was not interfering with the computer use, and I could work around it.
About six months ago another stripe showed up, right at the START screen, covering all the important essential function needed for the proper computer use, and at that point I was almost ready to throw the laptop away.
I was told, that the repair (as is usually the case with electronics) would be about as costly as getting a new unit, so I almost got a new one then. Finally I just plunked down more money for new screen, that works perfectly fine, however at this point the portability (the main reason for getting the laptop in the first place) is a non-existent advantage and a moot point.
(And also the fan issue got considerably worse, now that I am running external monitor as a part of the setup).
So there it is one star taken off for each issue, remaining two starts given for relatively reliable performance otherwise.Having used the `other' Laptop brands at home and at work I have had issues with each...I decided to try something new. I purchased my Toshiba Satellite P105-S6114 during Christmas of 2003 primarily for my personal use consisting of music, photo and video with related editing software tools. Then as now, I have not been disappointed! In fact I actually had to look up when I purchased this unit for it did not seem that long ago that I brought home my Toshiba. I use it daily with heavy multitasking and it still runs great! For someone who can spend a day easily taking 300-700 photo's at a time for download, editing and printing...I needed something that could easily travel with me, a wide screen for close-up detailed graphics, a hefty storage space, a unit capable of handling strong photo editing tools and a keyboard easy on the fingers for building documents. Unlike other Users, I have had no issues with the keys. Now Aug 2009, I still have 'no' regrets. I would recommend this unit to anyone....luv my Toshiba!
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