Five stars for bang for the buck.
Got this for my long-suffering Dell-owning girlfriend three months ago, after much searching for a basic laptop at a good price. We paid well under five bills for it new, and have had no problems whatsoever. Even the dreaded Vista is working fine, as there's plenty of RAM for it to hog.
First time with a Toshiba laptop and I must say I'm impressed. The body and keys are light plastic, but still feel solid. To sell this unit this cheap, some corners must be cut. Those are good ones to cut. The stuff under the hood is what matters, and that stuff is solid. The burner burns cds and dvds well and quickly. The computer gets a tad warm but not overly so; the fan blows very warm air out to the left, and is so efficient that you can warm your hands in the air in the winter! The screen is wider than most and I like that effect.
We got it mainly for the net and it does that very well indeed. As fast as my friend's 2,500 clams MacBookPro, in fact. Sure, his graphics are tighter and the machine is way more solid...but it cost six times more. If, like my gal, you mainly use your laptop for the net and making cds, looking at photos and the occasional movie, this is a very fine unit. I've been writing on this one for nine hours straight today, and have no eye fatigue or signs of impending carpal tunnel. Gotta like that.
One thing well worth mentioning is the amazingly intelligent idea of having an analog dial for the volume on the front of the unit. Duhhh!! Why have I never seen this on a laptop before? It makes so much sense. Plus there's a mute button up top near the power button, and ff/rew and play buttons. These are features we use a lot and it's wonderful to not have to open them on the screen every time. Very smart design.
We looked at every laptop out there and decided that this Satellite offered the most value.
So far, we think we made a very good choice.
Well done, Toshiba.
It is a nice laptop with good memory. It has a variety of DVD viewers I use a few different ones depending on the type of movie. I have my iTunes on my laptop ... playback is good. The only thing I recommend is to have a laptop cooler pad and additional speakers because the computer speakers are good but not great. It is definitely a good buy if you are on a budget. If you looking for a light weight laptop ....it is kinda on the heavy side. It works for me though!
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First thing to note: I did not purchase this computer on Amazon. I bought it through Best Buy. Second, I've had this computer for nearly three years at the time of this review. Originally, I purchased it around July of 2009. It came with Win Vista, but it qualified for the free upgrade to Windows 7, which I got through the mail a few months after that OS came out. So, my time with Vista was limited, and I can't say for certain how the computer performed then versus now, because it seems to me that the performance is similar.
I've done a lot of personal experimenting on this computer. When I upgraded to Win 7, I originally stayed with 32 bit for awhile, just to get a feel for the OS in a more stable environment. Eventually, I did a clean install of Win7 64 bit and ran into a few surprises. First, the drivers that Toshiba provides for the 64 environment didn't seem to work as well. Flash cards didn't work at all (the utility that uses your FN keys to do nifty things). The display driver was atrocious. I had screen lags, and a lot of my software didn't display properly. I even looked for an update from ATI directly, but because this is a device that is heavily controlled by Toshiba, I couldn't find a workable solution.
So, I went back to Win 7 32bit, and I've been using that ever since. My overall experience has been satisfactory, but there have been issues with this laptop. First, the battery life was terrible on both Vista and 7. On average, I was only getting about an hour and a half with mild usage. Second, several of my ports displayed bad behavior. In particular, I haven't had much luck with the built in SD card reader. It tends to lose the drives after awhile, causing corrupted files. Sadly, this is one feature that I haven't been able to use.
About a year into owning this notebook, I had to have the screen looked at. I took it to a friend who works on computers, and he told me that the connector for the display didn't have a locking mechanism on it, so it just kind of sat on the motherboard. He reconnected it for me, and I haven't had trouble since, but I'm still waiting for it to happen again.
I also had to replace the hard drive early on, because it apparently shipped with defective sectors. Probably physical damage. I was constantly losing files because of this, and so I wasn't productive. Once I replaced the hard drive (a very simple process), the problem was cured, and I haven't had those issues since.
I've also noticed a tendency for the USB ports to function in an erratic way. This problem has become worse in the past few months, and I beleive that the motherboard may be about to quit on me.
Despite these issues, the notebook has given me two and a half years of computing. I've done light gaming on it, ran virtual machines, surfed the web. All without a hiccup. My biggest complaint with this notebook, is the screen brightness. Even on its highest setting, the display doesn't seem very bright, which makes watching TV and movies a disappointing experience.
I've also come to dislike the volume knob on the front of the computer. I sometimes work in my car, and so the computer is jammed up against my stomach. As I move in the seat, the knob often gets hit, causing the volume to fluctuate. This isn't a big issue, but it can sometimes surprise me when I get home and fire up a video or song.
The speakers are blah. If you tweak the setting in Realtek manager, you can get a somewhat better experience. But don't expect miracles there. A decent set of headphones will solve the problem, as will external speakers.
I did eventually get a high capacity battery for this thing. 98,000 mWh versus something like 47,000. The irony is, I get about 2.5X the amount of battery life. So, I went from an hour and a half on average to about five hours, fifteen minutes.
Regarding the hardware issues. I purchased this notebook from a Best Buy store. Honestly, I believe it was something in the way they handled the thing when they brought it into their inventory. Maybe they were careless or something. With the exception of the screen going out, I can't really say that it's a design issue. It cools well enough, and it's been a pretty reliable computer for the most part.
I'll be retiring this beast in another few weeks as I have a replacement on the way. I should tell you that I purchased another Satellite through the Toshiba website. I hope that tells you how much I've liked this one. For less than $500, it was a good bargain at the time. Despite the problems I've had with it over the years, I've come to love it. It was my workhorse for a long time. I'm thinking of either selling it, or re-purposing it for a linux installation.
A sidenote: I have tried linux on this computer. Mainly Ubuntu. The notebook did well with it, although the fan seemed to run all the time. I noticed that the usb ports didn't seem to have as much of an issue, and even the SD card reader worked a lot better.
I would recommend this product to someone who's thinking of buying it as a refurbed model. It's not a bad computer for the money. A little dated now, but still a worthy road warrior.
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I bought this laptop in the late summer/early fall of 2008. This was a quick/cheap replacement as I boke the screen on my old HP. Got this bad boy for $375 with a wireless printer package deal at a local best buy mainly got it for college papers, movies, the usual college stuff... I TAKE iT EVERYWHERE with me and has not failed me yet. Its now 5/16/11 and about time for a new battery as it only holds about 30 minutes of charge but its a cheap replacement and well worth it!! I'd buy another one with out hesitation.... For under $400 after tax this laptop has saved me thousands and still runs fast and is reliable. Finally going to upgrade to 6GB memory as I now have 3. it runs quick with 3 can't wait for 6!!!!
2/21/12 UPDATE: My PC is still running like a champ! :)
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The battery life is short, you will need external speakers or head phones. But the biggest problem I had was the motherboard was fried, dead as a door nail three days after the manufacturers warranty ran out. I had to send it in for repairs twice in the year I had it because of loose connections to the screen. So if you are looking for a cheap disposable laptop this one is for you.
I was looking for a fairly inexpensive laptop and came across this one. Originally I had seen it on ebay, but it was more expensive, so I checked Amazon. The laptop has an older processor, but I don't see any difference in the speed compared to a much more expensive and newer laptop that my husband just bought that has the newest processor out. The only con to this laptop is that there is no built in webcam, but its an easy fix. Just would have been nice if it was built in. Other than that, I love it. It works great and the design is awesome. I would highly recommend this to any person looking to purchase it for enjoyment. (I.E. surfing the web, downloading music, print pictures, etc.)
