Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 Laptop (1.1-GHz Pentium III, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB hard drive)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Just picked this laptop up.

Pro:

Large 15 inch screen with no pixels burned out
1.1GHZ Pentium III Processor - plenty of muscle
Excellent 16MB Video Card NVIDIA Geoforce 2
30GB Drive - it's nice to have a bigger drive
512mb SDRAM Standard - Great with Windows XP
Great Sound System - with Subwoofer under the unit
Front panel CD/DVD controls
DVD/CDRW Drive in one drive
3 USB Ports + Firewire and BlueTooth - also Ethernet and Modem
Two 3V memory card slots for Digitial camera unloading, etc.
Very nice looking Laptop - Well built

Negatives:
Screen only displays in 1024 X 768 mode - will do virtual modes
(Should have higher full screen resolution for 15 inch screen)
HD is quite slow at 4200 RPM's and mine is very very noisy
Fan is very loud when running
Battery life is only about 1.5 hours
CDR/RW is quite slow at 8X/4X
Quite heavy at almost 7 pounds
No Serial or Parallel ports - but does have 3 USB ports

I really like this laptop but the HD Drive noise is driving me nuts. I'm going to see if I can get it replaced from Toshiba.

If you are looking for a desktop replacement with a lot of horse power - this may be a good laptop for you. If you are looking for something light and quiet - it is not your machine.

What's GOOD:
-------------------------
-16MB nVidia GPU is balanced perfectly for practically every application, ranging from video editing to photo manipulation to 3D gaming to your basic office programs.

-The harmon/kardon speakers with subwoofer have to be the best sound system on any laptop.

-Three USB ports are built-in but the parallel and serial port have been sacrificed. The trade-off is well worth it because nothing really uses those types of connections any more.

-The Sub-LCD with control buttons on the front make skipping tracks and fast-forwarding DVD's more easy.

-The floppy (3.5") disk drive externally hooks up to a USB port which saves weight when you don't need it. The only internal disk drives are for a Secure Digital and/or SmartMedia card.

-Industrial designers played a bigger role in the aesthetics of this laptop, so you end up with more than just the typical grey box. It's definitely one of the better looking ones on the market today.

What's NOT so good:
-------------------------
-With such a powerful video card, it's a shame that the screen can only support an internal resolution of 1024x768. Also, a XGA screen would have been a better choice than an active-matrix one.

-The cooling systems consists of a fan that only turns on when the processor gets hot. Unfortunately, it gets very annoying to hear it start and stop so often.

-The battery only lasts about 2 hours. On certain power settings, it can last maybe 2.5, but that just isn't enough. If you watch a movie with the DVD-ROM drive, the battery will be almost bone dry.

-Lack of accessories limits what can be done with this laptop. To the best of my knowledge, you can NOT buy a cigarete adapter to use it in the car, there are no modular drives, and a docking station/port replicator is not available.

-The IR (infrared) port is on the front left side, which makes is extreme difficult to line up with other IR devices (printers, other laptops, PC's) because you have to point it away from you.

-The top of the laptop is a large and shiny blue plastic cover. It does look nice, but it requires extra care because every little blemish, smudge, and scratch will show up.

I bought this computer to replace an older Toshiba laptop and
so far I'm quite impressed. On the plus side.....

Speed in General- Wanted a much speed and ram as I could afford.
I bought cheap last time and regretted it.

15" Display- Had a 12" before,so I'm in heaven with this one.
Clarity to me seems quite good.

CDR- Not a real biggie for me with the large drive, but nice to
have.Also has DVD which I'll probably never use.

30gb Drive- Should be enough for quite awhile.

Smart Media Slot- Have a digital camera so it comes in handy.

Speakers- The sound from this considering it's a laptop is very
very good.

The only two gripes are..

I wish they would do like Dell and include an eraserhead along with the touchpad. I'm getting a little more comfortable with the touchpad but still prefer an eraserhead pointer.

Battery life seems short to me at 1:45.

Powerusers rejoice! The Toshiba Satellite 5005 pushes the limits of a consumer-oriented notebook, offering high-end features at a consumer friendly price. While more expensive than many, the system offers more memory (512 MB vs 256), larger hard disk (30 GB vs. 20), bigger screen (15" vs. 14.1"), more video memory (16 MB vs. 8 MB), and faster processor (1.1-GHz vs. 1) than most common configurations from Compaq, HP, and others. Finally, an affordable system for powerusers and gamers.

Positives:
* A visual standout, a real looker.
* Has a Firewire (IEEE 1394) port for use in editing with digital camcorders and other devices.
* The subwoofer makes this computer one of the first notebooks to take sound seriously.
* Direct SmartMedia and SecureDigital inputs allow easy connectivity with digital cameras. The is one of the few non-Sony notebooks to offer a way to directly connect storage cards (although Sony's use the Memory Stick format) without an adaptor.

Tradeoffs:
* While there are three USB ports, there is no parallel or serial ports. You will need to purchase an adapter (like those from Belkin) to use a parallel printer with this computer.
* The system is on the heavy side. There is a weight price for the computing power.
* Battery life is under two hours. Consider an extra battery or two for those long flights.

Overall, an excellent system...provocative package...powerful.

..
Having been chained to an old Toshiba Tecra 700 CT for the last five years, I was ready to upgrade to something not only more powerful and reliable, but hopefully something that would look nice and have some fun features.

I selected the Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 because it was powerful - with 576 meg RAM, 30 gig hard drive, and a 1.1 Gigaherz procesor speed. I especially wanted the large hard drive, since I will be using it for academic studies and I want to load some large reference programs into it. After loading everything I have, I still have a huge amount of space left over, so I guess I will have to see what Amazon has left to sell me.

The function of the machine is GREAT, and the way it handles graphics is awesome. The dvd player works great, and the display really seems three-D. One of the first things I did with it was to plug in Jurassic Park III, and the graphics were so good I thought that mother of a carnosaur was going to jump out of the screen and eat me. I also loved the sound, although I soon afterwards added a larger amplified sound system.

I was also thrilled that it was so easy to plug the machine into a television set. I will be using a lot of Powerpoint and it will be nice not to have to use the old adapter system.

The only drawback is that it has no serial or parallel ports, but since I networked it, it really doesn't matter. I did purchase an adapter for the serial port, but don't expect to have to use it.

In short, this is a great machine and I love it.

My father and I each bought one of these computers, to make a long story short, my fathers has been serviced 3 times, and mine once, they both overheat, randomly shut down in the middle of use, the CD drives both malfunctioned and had to be replaced. The list goes on, DO NOT PURCHASE THIS!

I was so excited when My new computer came via UPS that day ordered from Amazon.com My favorite place to shop :) After unpacking and inspecting the computer I realized the cd/dvd players drivers were not installed. After 3 calls to Toshiba totaling about 4 hours of time I was told I would have to pack it up and ship it to them to fix or pay 350 dollars for an on-site warranty soooooo I packed it up and sent it back to Amazon and ordered a Hewlett Packard instead through Amazon. A lot of people have problems with the fans in these also its a pretty pretty computer too bad its has so many bugs operationally.

This is the second toshiba laptop I've bought, and it sure will be my last.
Toshiba laptops are great - among any laptop owners I've known, I've had very little problems using the product. However, when you do have a problem, the warranty services are horrible.
I've had a few problems with my recent laptop that purchased from the toshiba site online. The DVD CD-RWrom was delivered broken. Also, approximately one year after purchase, my LAN would not work.

I had purchased a 3 year premium warranty when I purchased the laptop. The staff at Toshiba never recorded that information, and it took me weeks tracking myself back to the Toshiba sales representative (the guy that I originally bought the laptop from) in order to get that settled. I was annoyed that Toshiba did not have enough staff base to fix their own problems, but the worse was yet to come.

The 24-hour costumer service staff are extremely polite when they answer your calls. When I called to complain about my broken CD rom, they shipped a box right away via Airborne Express.

It only takes about 5 to 7 business days from the time you make a complain call to receiving the box, sending the box to the Toshiba depot, then getting it sent back to you. However, they NEVER fix your problem. Adding insult to the injury, the feedback form always has some weird comment such as "I ran scandisk on your computer" (did they even read what the problem was??) It took me 12 months, 9 shipping back and forth, and much more calls to the costumer service (which they did always answer politely) until the miserable CD rom finally got replaced.

I refuse to buy another Toshiba product (and I highly recommend others to do so as well) until they improve their warranty services. Warranty servics is not about answering calls politely, shipping things super fast, or providing friendly after-repair comments. It is about getting problems fixed. Toshiba has plenty of service representatives, but severely lacks qualified technicians.

It is a nice looking box, just got it off Circuit City. Nice screen and soundsystem. Keyboard is great. We used the smartmedia download and it was flying. The DVD is great too.

The biggest complaint is

(a) XP is still very buggy - be prepared to spend hours on microsoft.com (and yes my cable modem went out on me due to excite@home's problem) and downloading patches become a chaos. (b) Toshiba websites and support forum are great but the folks have not had much experience with this product yet. For e.g. the CD for Easy Creator does not work, comes with a funny 5.1 version and the path set wrong. The folks at Toshiba is clueless as they have not used it. And don't know where to get the orginal source file.
(c) The LED in the front is useless - it is so tiny and doesn't light up when it is connected to power (it does for 5 seconds) that it is practically useless.
(d) Yes, XP does crash - wait till you load peripheral products on it. Mainly driver problems.

It is a nice toy if you are into a little weekend troubleshooting for Windows and Toshiba.

N

I purchased this laptop with the understanding that it would out-perform my Compaq Presario 1215 with Windows 95, which is still working perfectly.

When getting the Toshiba, I also purchased the max 4 year warranty. I'm glad I did.

Within the first year, the LCD display went out.

During the 2nd year the hard drive had to be replaced.

Then again during the 2nd year they had to replace the CD/CDRW drive.

During the 3rd year they had to replace the CD/CDRW drive, the System board, the sub-system board, the fan, and several other things.

When I got it back, the CD/CDRW was having a hard time reading the CD's. They assured me that this was normal because they said that this is a slow speed drive.

Even my old Compaq Presario 1215 that I bought in 1996 read's faster.

After putting up with this for a year, I got tired of waiting 5 minutes each time for the CD/CDRW to recognize the CD's.

After sending it back for the 5th time, they accused me of damaging it. I told them that my conclusion was that they either damaged it or that it was damaged during delivery the last time it was fixed. They did replace the CD/CDRW after threatening legal action, in which we are still considering.

Considering that we are a well established Church and the fact that we own several computers and that this Toshiba is in a locked office and has been handled very gently and hasn't gone anywhere except back and forth to Toshiba. I have come to the conclusion that the internal parts in Toshiba laptops are just plain cheap. They never even offered me a new one considering that I purchased it at Best Buy, brand new.

So I strongly recommend avoiding Toshiba. Go with Dell or Hewlette Packard. Dell would be my first choice, then HP since Gateway uses high pressure to get a sale.