Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite A215-S4747 15.4-inch Laptop (AMD Turion 64 Processor TL56, 1 GB RAM, 200 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

Note: This is a copy of the same review I posted on the Toshiba site.
Intelligent Design - all ports on the side, instead of in the back, keyboard large enough to permit normal typing speeds.
Excellent performance and features for the price and in comparison to competitor brands.
Excellent quality and solid feel in the construction of the laptop.
Excellent expandability. 4GB RAM max, 64 bit processor which may allow the laptop to upgraded to a 64bit OS in future, Vista or Linux (drivers, BIOS permitting) 200GB drive size.
Not an inordinate amount of shovelware.
Battery life at just over 2 hours, now that I "trained" it. A nine cell would have been nice, therefore only a 4 rating for battery life.
Wireless chipset, Sound and Video subsystems seem excellent.
Very quiet drive compared to A135-S4527. However it is slower than the 5400rpm drive in the S4527, which dropped performance rating to 4. I wish it had been partitioned into a c: and D: partition so that I could keep data on the d: partition and not have to backup offsite to restore the OS.
Sufficient RAM. I wish they had provided a single 1GB SO-DIMM rather than two 512MB's. I had to pull both out to upgrade to the recommended 2GB. The video will pull anywhere from 128MB to 384 so this upgrade is even more necessary than on systems using Intel's Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950.
I bought and returned a Acer Aspire 3680-2633 ( BIOS Issues) and a Tobshiba S135-4527 (32 bit processor and 2GB RAM limitation) before settling on this unit. No regrets on this one.

I am a happy user of Thinkpad T series, but now with Lenovo taking over, I decided to buy a Toshiba, due to years of its great reputation, for my wife as she needed to replace her current laptop. After putting the product into my shopping list, I saw the local Circuit City offering $150 off, so I bought it there. (I just want to comment that I wonder how long Circuit City would last with the sales kids knowing little about the products they are selling but pretend to know a lot, and when you refused to buy additional warranty their face just turned unfriendly. Then it took them 20 minutes to find the key to open the closet to give me the box. It was the same attitude at the local CompUSA and I made a similar observation a couple of years ago, and now they are closed.)

At Circuit City, I saw an Acer Aspire with the same configuration as this Toshiba (except 160 GB hard drive) selling for $600. With unsatisfied experience with Acer Aspire, I bought the Toshiba with a little bit of hesitance due to a significant price difference of $250.

But Toshiba is Toshiba. My 9 year old daughter looked at it and said it was like a big DS (Nintendo). The look and feel is just like a piece of fine chocolate that you want to eat. The keyboard and touchpad are laid out in a perfect size, quality, and sensitivity. I am a trackpoint user and no touchpad has ever impressed me like this one.

The power of AMD Turion 64, with 2GB of ram just eliminated my ritual of having to buy additional memory right after buying a notebook. My wife still has her Acer Aspire with her and trying it next to each other, we just know it is worth $250 extra for happiness. Even without that comparison, this Toshiba is still a great deal for $850. You can't buy a better notebook. HP is selling a similar one around this range, but again, I didn't have a good experience with HP either.

One minor weakness is that you can't turn your screen all the way down to 180 degree, like my Thinkpad can. There are some occasions that I need to lay my computer nearly flat on a lectern to speak looking at it. If you don't need to use it that way, and few people do, this is not a problem.

I don't know about the support of Toshiba. The reason I like Thinkpad is IBM's service. I had a problem with my Thinkpad the other day, I called in and the next day there was a box at my door. I put the computer in, they picked it up, and I receive the computer back the next evening, with a new motherboard. I wonder if Toshiba can beat that. If they can, I am switching over.

I'll review the Toshiba A215-4697.
BASICS: 160 HDD, 1Gb Ram. ATI Radeon 120 up to 300+ Mb of video Ram (shared) and lots of other stuff.

To make it short: I love this computer. It works fine. Does what it's supposed to do, and, since it's not a Mac, it requires you to set it up before it will be the way you like it. After that, it's done and it works.

The wireless conection works fine for me and the S-Video video output allows me to extend my desktop into my TV so I can easily play a DVD for my girlfriend while I browse the Internet without any lag.

The CD-DVD writer has worked flawlesly.

The bad thing: UNWANTED SOFTWARE!!! This is my first branded computer and I don't know if it happens in every brand of computer. Lots of unnecesary software comes bundled with the computer. It takes about 1 hour to get rid of it all. After that, I installed my favorite aplications.

IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are 2 issues people have been complainig for:

1st: Computer screen going blank. I don't have that problem (hope it stays like this).

2nd: You are tiping and the cursor jumps into another line and your text goes all screwed up.
Solution 2: To solve the crazy-cursor when typing, you have to reduce your Touchpad sensibility. Go to Control Panel (in classic view). Then open Mouse-> ADVANCED tab -> click ADVANCED FEATURE SETTINGS -> 'Pointer speed and tapping settings'. Look for the 'Tapping settings' button and click it. You-ll see 'Operations during key input' enable it and this will disable the touck pad tapping function while typing. Worked for me!!!! No more crazy cursor.

You may also like to look for the 'Pointer speed and tapping settings' button. Slide the sensibility arrow all the way to the left. But that is not necesary to stop the crazy jumping cursor.

Did I made it short? NO? Sorry... love to have people reading. :-)

I've used all kinds of laptops, including other Toshibas, with little or no problems. I purchased the S4747 because it has a built-in web cam and microphone and it was on sale. I opened the box and started using it even before checking reviews; that was my mistake. I've relearned the lesson that even with a good brand like Toshiba I should check reviews first!

I had the same "black screen of death" that other reviewers have mentioned. I worked with several technicians at Toshiba technical support for many, many hours trying to fix the problem (ticket 1-704536542). They were convinced that it was not a problem at all, rather, that the PC was simply going into hibernate mode, even though I repeatedly told them that the problem occurred while I was USING the PC and it was plugged in to power. Or, when I told them that I had to do a hard reboot to get the PC to work again, they would tell me that all I had to do was press the power button for a short time to bring it out of hibernate mode. It was extremely frustrating, though they were certainly "polite."

The black screen of death is bad enough, but it didn't happen every day. What is worse, in a way, is the cursor problem. If I rested my hands on the laptop while I typed, the cursor would jump all over the place, sometimes erasing entire sentences. This happened almost every paragraph, and I was forced to watch my typing so that I could reposition the cursor. Or, I was forced to keep my hands up and completely off the laptop, which resulted in arm fatigue after a page or two of typing. You can imagine how much this slowed my typing speed! At first, Toshiba technical support tried to tell me that I was getting my fingers, thumbs, or hands on the touchpad, causing the cursor to move, but I knew that wasn't the case. Then they thought that perhaps the touchpad itself was overly sensitive, that the vibrations on the case were causing the cursor to move. But they couldn't figure out how to adjust the touchpad or pointer sensitivity. Those parts of the operating system which control it were missing, and they didn't know why! At that point, after so many hours and so much frustration, I gave up and decided to return the laptop.

Some reviewers seem not to have any problems with their laptops. Does that mean there are quality control issues and only some of these models have problems? I don't know. But do you want to take the chance? I would have liked to keep this PC.

Update: A friend asked me to fix a problem with hibernation on her Toshiba laptop (a different model), and Toshiba tech support told me that I needed to reload Windows from the recovery CDs that came with the unit, which I did (ticket 1-718056769). Not only did this not fix the original problem, it created a new - and worse - problem with the video drivers. After more hours on the phone with Toshiba, they informed me that the software on the recovery CDs was corrupt and I needed a new set, which would cost $40. Since the laptop was still under warranty I objected to this charge, but I was told that is Toshiba policy. Between the bad customer support and the billing for defective parts under warranty, I don't think I'll be purchasing a Toshiba again.

Very good choose. This Laptop comes with the new Windows Vista, and good software and tools include. Expandible to 4GB of RAM, DVD burner and Very nice wide screen. If you register your product directly in toshiba, you can get totaly free a external mouse. For designers and gamers, this machine comes with a ATI video card and up to 380MB on video memory. Good choose and good price !!

We were looking for our first family laptops when we found the Toshiba Satellite A215-4757. It was such a great deal we bought two of them. Our initial impression when we started to use them was these were very competent machines that even outperformed our home PC. With 2GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive, memory is no problem. This computer has wonderful audio and video capabilities and a nice 15.4" screen. Buttons and controls are easy to use; even better if you buy a wireless mouse. In addition to this, web browsing with the wireless-G card was extremely fast and without hesitation. The added bonus is that the DVD/CD drive burns excellent quality video and audio disks.

Trouble in paradise started when the infamous "blank screen of death" appeared on both computers within the first week. We were reluctant to return or exchange the laptops as we had already installed antivirus software and Microsoft Office 2007. We called Toshiba tech support and they were no help. They claimed to know nothing about the problem but would mark my complaint in the record and notify me when they had more information.

Relief came in an online search. We had read up on this defect on a google search and other reviewers found a possible fix. It involved working with the power management options and read like this: "On Windows Vista try going to the Power Options, advanced options, processor power management, and change the value of the minimum processor state to 100%." We were skeptical at first but decided to give it a try on both laptops. To our surprise, it is almost a month later and this has never happened again on either laptop and we are extremely happy with our purchases. We actually give this laptop a 5 star rating, but subtracted one star for the shoddy Toshiba tech support which still doesn't acknowledge a defect or this fix. I highly recommend this machine, but be aware you may need to adjust the power options setting to avoid this problem.
-Michael Ditkowsky

I bought this at Best Buy locally. I recieved my first one and the screen would suddendly go blank. I would have to restart it by pushing the power button. I took it to get diagnosed and it was a bad motherboard.

Just recieved the replacement. It did the same thing the first time I used it. Assuming the motherboard is bad.

When I took this one back, I was told that there was another one that came in with a bad motherboard.

I am extremely disappointed that if I could give it Zero stars I would. Please buy something else and save yourself the headache.

Don't know what features I like since it didn't stay on long enough to really use the computer!

I have a Toshiba Satellite A215 and experienced the blank screen pretty much every day. Wasted many hours on the phone with Toshiba techs reinstalling Vista, updating the Video Driver and BIOS which DOESN'T WORK. So I thought what the hey I'll just go without a computer for a week and have Toshiba fix it. Sent it in (which was a major hassle to go through UPS) and about a week later I got it back. Whoo Hoo!! Finally, a working computer right?! WRONG!! About 2-3 hours after running it BLANK SCREEN STRIKES AGAIN!!!! (All they did was update BIOS) So for those of you thinking about sending your A215 in to Toshiba DON'T DO IT!! It will come back still defective. My story however I believe at this point ends happily because of a suggestion someone posted on this site a couple weeks ago. This was the user's suggestion "If you are running VISTA, try going to the Power Options, advanced options, processor power management, and change the value of the minimum processor state to 100%." (THANKS RICARDO!!!) It's been a week now and still no blank screen. My computer NEVER has gone that long without blanking out so I'm extremely hopeful the problem is solved. Hope this works for everyone.....

-Trevor

My new laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757. It came with 2 gigs of ram, a dual core processor, a 250 gig hard drive, and a web cam which I haven't bothered with yet. It is LIGHTNING FAST and I got it at Best Buy for under $1000.00.

But it has one serious defect that had me considering taking it back to the store for a refund. It was intermittently going into hibernation mode once or twice a day - and wouldn't come out no matter what I did. This was REALLY FRUSTRATING!!! Sometimes it went into hibernation even while I was actively using the keyboard!!! Toshiba's tech support people were clueless. They advised me to re-install windows and a bunch of drivers from the recovery cd... to no effect.

I did a Google search for the phrase "Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757" and discovered lots of negative user reviews... many others are experiencing this problem too... and Toshiba's recommended solution of using the recovery cd doesn't do squat.

But I REALLY LOVE THIS MACHINE otherwise... can't type the letters large enough to emphasize this fact...

So I began playing around with the machine itself and believe it or not I found a workaraound for the hibernation problem that works for me:

1. Go into CONTROL PANEL

2. Go into HIGH PERFORMANCE/change Plan Settings

3. Change the setting "Put the computer to sleep" from the default of 20 minutes to NEVER and click SAVE CHANGES.

After doing that the problem simply STOPPED happening!

So, despite the negative press, I would still recommend this machine as a good buy. Just be prepared to go into Power Options and set auto-hibernate to Never.

It's a pity Toshiba tech support couldn't think of thaton their own... and a pity Toshiba quality control didn't discover the problem before these machines started showing up on shelves.

By the way, HP makes a similar machine for about the same price.

My two cents...

Jeff P
San Diego, CA

I bought this computer thinking that it would be a great tool for bringing to college (the 200 GB hard drive was the main sell), but the screen keeps going blank and the touchpad does not work well. It highlights things I don't want highlighted and kept locking, and as a person without any patience whatsoever, this has become a problem. I've called Toshiba countless times and their technical support is terrible in helping me with this problem. I'm returning this laptop this weekend and getting the laptop I originally wanted...an HP. Do not spend your money on a laptop that just keeps giving you problems.