Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204 Laptop (1-GHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This laptop is quite useful..battery life is excellent at lasting for about 2.5 to 3 hours with normal use. I finished Star wars Episode 1 before it was close to the battery running out. The graphics are so so, this laptop is definately not ment for a gamer. If you want a gaming laptop...get one with a Geforce 2 Go in it. But other than that, this is an excellent laptop.

I'm not much into games and use my PC's mainly for business applications. For this purpose, the notebook is great value for money. The graphics is good, network connectivity is a snap (literally), it's fast, reliable, quiet and easy to carry around. I just ordered a wireless LAN card for it so I can use it anywhere in our house to access the internet or the other PC's.

This computer has been a disaster. The modem has never worked once. When I call tech support, they blame it on my settings, my ISP, or my OS, pending their mood. The monitor flickers and goes dark on a daily basis for hours at a time. I have sent the computer in twice to be "fixed" only to get back a machine that works for a short period of time before the flickering problem returns. They kept "fixing" my problems for just long enough, so that my warranty could expire and now they could say tough luck. I would never buy a lousy Toshiba product again.

Hey all- I have been following the class-action suit against Toshiba RE: random shut-offs and wanted to correct something that another reviewer asserted. In the "one bad apple..." review, the reviewer asserts that the BIOS fixes offered by Toshiba will correct this problem. This is a truth wrapped in falsehood. The BIOS fix WILL prevent this problem from occuring, but it is because it prevents your computer from running at its advertised speed. To say this is a solution is insane. All it suggests is that you should have bought a cheaper, slower computer to begin with. Do NOT confuse the BIOS fix as a real fix. Do not buy this computer. Also, do not buy a Satellite 5005-series or 1900-series. Same deal. Viva le lawsuit!

I got my 1805-S204 for $799 after a rebate and just love it. Great price, great performance, and great touch pad.

To fix the ever annoying anti-CD-explore "feature" just right click on the CD drive in "My Computer", click properties, and under hardware, highlight the DVD-rom drive off the list and hit the properties button on this screen. Uncheck the "Enable Digital Cd audio on this drive" feature in the properties tab of this box.

Fixed it *Instantly* on my machine. Exploring like a madman now.

It may be a touch heavy, but a friend of mine who has a pretty new Compaq laptop says mine is much lighter (and runs *much* cooler) than his.

As far as the screen being small, I look at this way. For $1000 you can buy:

-A portable DVD player, that will play DVDs and some music

or

-A laptop that will do the same, and so VERY much more, with a screen twice as big.

Who cares if some laptops have a 14 or 15 inch screen, I don't have an extra grand to throw around and the way these things are measured is kinda deceiving anyway, you don't see much of a real world difference bumping from 13.3 to 14.1, trust me.

I am one of many with the famous Toshiba laptop overheat-and-shut-down problems. I just wanted to point out- since someone dismissed this problem as being easily correctible- it is NOT. updating BIOS was a clever trick by Toshiba to deflect the problem- not fix it. The BIOS fix merely SLOWS your computer down so that the processer produces less heat. However, it means that the user wasted a lot of money on a fast chip they cannot use. do not buy this computer (or the 1900 series) and expect to run it at the speed you were promised. Hell it may not run at all. Mine shuts down when i load some acrobat files, use Word, burn Cds, etc. i'm furious! right now, as I type, I have TWO ice packs on this piece of plastic and yet it has already shut-off twice in the last hour. I'm not kidding. this is not a whiny-- why isn't my computer perfect?-- complaint. I cannot use many Cd-roms, I cannot watch dvds AT ALL (meaning $ wasted on that drive), I cannot watch streaming video. I cannot even write a term paper without expecting a shut-off or two. No joke.

For everyone with your random power shutoff's which is what most of these bad ratings are about, YOU HAVE TO GO UPDATE YOUR BIOS!!! If you dont know how to do it, ask someone who does. I bought this laptop new for $... before the price break from (a local store). It has worked great with the exception of one time on a trip to VA I was changing some setting on my start up and the thing locked up tighter than a drum. No surprise that technical support was in a country where english is rarely spoken. Turns out something with the motherboard went haywire and warranty replaced it. I think people sometimes have the wrong idea from moving from a desktop to a laptop of what they will have. Laptop's have problems, no different than a convertible is guaranteed to leak. You have to learn there is always some compromise when you have a pc you can take to the beach and watch a movie on. Other than the one snag it has been a great machine. I took off XP home and put on XP Professional and it has been all smooth sailing. Very clean, very fast, solid stable laptop.

I have owned several laptops over the years none of them Toshiba and had no problems. For my next Laptop I decided to save some money and purchase a Toshiba Satellite. This is the worst purchasing decision I have ever made.

In Six months, The machine has needed to be erased, and re-installed to factory setup 3 times. After spending days on the phone with toshiba "support" (you can't really call it support) the only response I could get was "That's normal, just be glad it starts at all".

The touch pad has deteriorated to be unusable, the plug for the head phones has disintegrated somewhere into the laptop, the ethernet plug, cannot hold the wire (it just falls out), and the cd-rom disappers from MyComputer. I have to reinstall the cd-rom drive to get the computer to recognize it for a few hours. Most recently the keys have started falling off of the keyboard. After weeks of trying with customer support I have given up, and am going to another manufacturer.

I'm not a kid under 13, but my daughter is, and she loves this computer as much as I do. After more than 5 years it has never given a significant problem. It has survived drops, spills and constant use and is still runing like new. I replaced the battery after 4 years and added memory. It is on the heavy side, but hey, its more than 5 years old. Overall, it is a great computer. It is much more reliable than my ThinkPad!

I've had it a few weeks. It's pretty solid and fast on most tasks. I had a little trouble using it with digital audio sequencers (which require lots of power) but was still able to record and playback 8 tracks with effects. Well, it's a celeron.

The built in NIC is great, and the modem is fine too. Online support is good too.