Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite A205-S4617 15.4" Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5500, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperMulti DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

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

 

 

This laptop is great. I only have a few issues. I wish the hard drive was faster than 4500 rpm and I wish it had the capability of connecting to a docking station or port replicator. I also really like the labelflash functionality. The laptop comes with 1 labelflash DVD that you can use. The problem is you cannot find labelflash media anywhere so it's basically useless.

Toshiba is, in general, a good machine, and that is the reason why I bought two notebooks again from this brand. Nevertheless, I am disappointed with some poor technical decisions that were made on these new Satellite series.
Do the designers of these new Satellite series realize that maybe people who buy them will be sometimes using the notebooks at conference auditoriums where silence is required?, or at night in airplanes and other places where it would be nice not to wake up everybody around when you start up your computer? Had they considered that, they would realized that if you do not turn the sound level down (at the volume icon, or in the outrageously hidden Windows system) before switching the computer off, you will certainly have the embarrassment of having the starting sound of Windows coming happily from your machine and without you being able to do nothing about it. Such obsolescence was carefully crafted into the new Satellite series, since in my old A10 and A30 notebooks the mechanical volume switch did work beautifully by being directly connected to the speaker amplifiers (something which, by the way, makes the control of sound in general one thousand times easier and less prone to errors - the "new feature" does not work well many times, leading the volume level to `jump' from, say, level "zero" to six - another technical courtesy to embarrass you in quiet public facilities).
Another problem with the machine performance was the choice of forcing users (no choice is given) to purchase the machine with Windows Vista, an operating system that will not run many of your old programs, that will consume a huge share of your ram memory just for the sake of some cosmetic cuteness, and that is technically very complicate to remove for "downgrading" your notebook to Windows XP. Also, many of the drivers of the Toshiba notebook are only available for Windows Vista, making it a nightmare to have some of the hardware operating in other Windows versions.
And lastly, the cooling fan of this Toshiba frequently works at maximum potency (with the corresponding noise) without any apparent reason (i.e., when almost no processing is taking place, as checked in the system management), making it a less silence machine (and probably unnecessarily shortening the life-spam of the fan).
At the end, I did regret having bought them. It is a car that looks good and has a good engine, but has an annoying sound system, a lot of unnecessary gadgets (Vista) that reduce performance and speed and you will find difficult to remove, a noise cabin, and a not-so-funny habit of waking up your neighbors with a loud horn in the middle of the night.

This laptop is an excellent machine. I own a Toshiba laptop from the 105 series, and I am extremely impressed with that one as well. I was cautious at first because I heard about overheating problems on Toshibas, and my friend owned one several years ago which did just that. However, it is my opinion that many of the laptops from 3-5 years ago which were running powerful intel pentium 4 processors or even amd's for that matter were overheating because the processors were just too big and too hot. Laptops today are designed with chips that can be cooled by a smaller fan...anyway thats just what I think.

So back to this laptop. I set out to get a smaller more lightweight laptop than the one I had previously (Toshiba 105 series). My requirements for this new laptop were simple. At least a 200 gb hard drive and at least 2 gb of ram (expandable to 4)and also be under 5 pounds. Well I didn't get the under 5 pounds part, however I did get to keep about $1000 in my pocket. I found a few sony's that met my demands. They had 13 inch screens, 200 gb hard drives, and 2 gbs of ram. But the cheapest one was selling for $2000. So I ended up buying this Toshiba, and it was an excellent decision.

Along with all of the specs which have been noted above, this laptop comes with Harmon/Kardon speakers which give very good sound. It also has a biometric fingerprint reader, which is a nice feature. And it has a built in webcam. I didn't see any of those specifications mentioned, but they may have been, I didn't read through the entire specs list. Overall, I am very pleased with this laptop.

There are several small improvements that I believe would make this laptop flawless.
1. Faster hard drive, the hard drive on this laptop is very large (250 gb) but it can only run at 4200rpms. A 5400rpm would do the trick, and a 7200 would really make this move.
2. Bluetooth. This laptop comes with everything, except bluetooth.
3. The lid is rather glossy, and it leaves fingerprints on it.
4. The battery life could be better, but it is not bad. About 2.5-3hrs.

I've used this laptop for school and work for about six weeks now and like it so far. The only complaints I have are:

The fan vent puts out a LOT of heat. It can make a small area uncomfortably warm.

The DVD drive is quite noisy. Fortunately, I don't generally have to use the drive outside my home.

Edited to Add: After about 9 months, the motherboard died (with no warning from the hardware monitoring feature of Windows Vista!!). Toshiba customer support/warranty repair department was helpful and handled things in an expedient fashion. Free 2-day mail to the repair center and free 2-day return mail to my residence meant I had a new motherboard within 8 days total (including a weekend) at no cost to me. I just hope I don't have any more trouble! If I hadn't been in warranty, that hardware replacement could have cost hundreds of dollars.

I previously have not had any major problems with my computers before so didn't really look into after sales service. After the experience of the last 2 months, I realize how important this is. Buyer beware! Toshiba offers a dis-service! It has now gone into their repair centre for the second time for the same problem! Their customer services were totally uncaring that I had taken time off work and spent money (about $60) just to get the computer to them... problems they still haven't been able to sort out. BTW, huge problems that Toshiba is finding impossible to solve... a faulty keyboard and a touchpad!

My daughter's A205's screen (backlight) went out several days ago. She called tech support to have someone troubleshoot the problem. After she explained she had attempted to adjust contrast without success, she asked the technician if she could help her. The technician said "Yes". After my daughter paid $35 for help, the technician told her to adjust the contrast (which she had already tried) and when that was not successful, the technician told her she couldn't help her fix the problem.

I attempted to get the $35 back. But they have a "NO SPECIAL CASES" policy, refusing to even consider it.

I will never purchase a Toshiba again. PERIOD.

If you ever need help with your Toshiba laptop and it is out of warranty, don't call Toshiba!

in general it is not bad but i like the high performance of this note book you'll notice a little hangs in the system but never a problem

This is a premium machine.

When buying a laptop, the key is the balance of the features; if you've got a great graphics card but a poor keyboard, what's the point?
The reason I recommend this laptop so highly is not that every one of the features is the best in its class (take the graphics card, for example, which is very good, but not a NVIDIA), but that all of the features could be rated at 4/5 or more.
The S4617 has no 'fatal flaw', unlike other laptops in its class. When researching this laptop I also considered the SONY VGN-FZ180E/B, which has a similar weight and storage capacity to the Toshiba. In fact its performance is marginally better on the benchmark tests, and it is .2pounds lighter. However, it apparently emits a continuous,high pitched sound which is quite annoying, according to some reviews, and the flat keyboard is very mediocre (as I found myself testing out a demo unit).

Here is my analysis of the A4617:
Pros:
-keyboard is a joy to type on
-huge storage (250GB)
-sleek design
-very quiet fan
-convenient media buttons
-by far the best speakers I've seen on a laptop
-windows vista zips along on this with 2GB ram
-graphics card, although not the best in the industry, will play all but the most intensive games
- light for a laptop of its class (1/2 pound lighter than the Dell Inspiron E105, for example)

CONS:
- battery life is fine at 2 hours, but is not excellent compared to other models
- it does get slightly warm on the bottom

You can't really go wrong with this laptop, unless you have very specific demands such as a TV tuner or intensive gaming requirements.
Check it out....

This is by far the best laptop I've seen. A lot of my friends have Vaio, HP, etc. I've seen all their laptops working and Toshiba is by far better. Exclusive Toshiba software that goes from games to media utility really help you get started off. I run 4 online games, three search pages, listen to music(which by the way, the speakers from harman-kardon are amazing, much clearer than my stereo at home), make downloads and the laptop is still really fast. No problems with overheating, finger print reader for great security, etc. If you're having doubts about the compatibility of the new Windows Vista dont worry. All of my softwares from XP(and I had quite a few) are working perfectly here. Just be prepared to spend about three hours to learn all new features that Vista offers which are fantastic. From voice recogintion(you can order the computer to do everything you can think of without lifting a finger) Windows Media Center is ten times better than the old Windows Media Player. Let's get back to the pc, I found absolutely no problems with it and I strongly recomend it. Trust me, you'll be throwing the extra dollars you'd spend on a Vaio away for an inferior product. If you're worried about the 4500 rpm for the 250GB it's a premature fear. I only have 50GB of files so far and it's as fast as if i had 0GB. Anyways, if you're a heavy user I recomend and external HD drive which are so cheap nowadays and keep all your stuf there. The advantage would be your anti-virus would'nt slow down your pc so much because there'd be few files on it and you'd just have to scan the External HD once in a while.

If you're in doubt about buying this pc, go for it, trust me, it's the best price performance for a laptop in the market today. See every dollar spent pay off big time.

This is my first Laptop and I'm very satisfied with the Toshiba Brand. As with my other products with Toshiba. The performance is excellent for what I do with this Laptop. Has a lot of features, more than others for the price. Go for quality, it"s better.