Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite A215-S5815 15.4-inch Laptop (AMD Turion 64 X 2 Dual Core TL-60 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 200 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This is basically a nice laptop. But I wish I would have purchased it today, since is $50 cheaper than when I did two weeks ago. Amazon loves to play with prices. I've learned to tame my impulses and check prices over a period of time (2 or 3 weeks). Amazon prices go up and down regularly. Some days a third party vendor might have the item, next day Amazon will have it. Back and forth. OK, enough of that.
This computer is beautiful to look at and has a gorgeous screen. Wide and bright. The keyboard is uncluttered, but has all the necessary functions. The keyboard, however, seems to have a large weak area on the right side, where it flexes noticeably whenever a key is pushed. Seems like a sign of low quality. The computer has no internal mic. There are
four USB ports, but they are located on each side towards the front. Whenever peripherals are plugged in, they are very obtrusive, especially
on the right side where most people would like to move the mouse around.
The really BAD thing is that all Vista users should plan on an extra outlay of $$ for more memory to prevent the sluggishness of this inferior operating system. To do over again, I probably would have ordered the
Thinkpad R61e with XP Pro from NewEgg online. Same price. More solid. And
XP. Hope I helped.

I recently reviewed this product very poorly because of the "Black Screen of Death" problem, but Toshiba, at the end of February, released a fix.


IMPORTANT: Toshiba has released a fix for the "Black Screen of Death"; a BIOS flash utility called safg v1.70 or v1.90, depending on your model number, which seems to fix the problem... It was a long time in the coming, but better late then never.


With the blank screen problem fixed, this computer is a good deal and an adequate performer. Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne works well with all settings at low, even Half Life 2 (but NOT Episode 1 or 2) works with low settings.

I am a broke student so I had to choose very carefully when selecting my laptop. I thought this would be good, and I was absolutely right. It's very quiet and battery efficient (at least from my experience), and it's specs are pretty good for this price.

Windows Vista comes included, but it may not appeal to many people. It looks great, but it does have a lot of bugs. I have owned this laptop for less than a week and it has already frozen on me four times.

I would definitely recommend this to someone looking for a laptop primarily used for student activities or basic usage. It's not really meant for business due the lack of bundled software, such as full version of MS Office, nor is it really for gamers or multimedia enthusiasts looking for a desktop replacement. For me, it suits me perfectly. The last laptop I had was a high-end 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 desktop replacement. It was a disaster for me as a student because it was the fans were too loud to really use in a public place and the battery life was less than half an hour.

I'm not too sure what the other customer review is freakin out for. This a quality laptop, for a very affordable price. I am in the US Army, and my job is basically working on computers. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprise with this laptop. It's got a gorgeous screen, and the USB ports are great. They shouldn't get in your way, unless for some strange reason you feel the need to move the mouse around RIGHT NEXT to your Laptop. Personally, I like a little space, so the USBs never bother me, or get in my way and I use 3 of them daily. Like I mentioned before, the screen is wide and bright, and crystal clear. The mouse pad is very responsive, and the Wi-Fi is GREAT.

Now there is one or two cons I have to mention, but neither is severe. For one, I was disappointed to find out this model DID NOT come with the advertised DVD buttons (play,stop,next,previous). However, who needs them, when you use Windows Media Player or any DVD player program? With WMP you can easily move to ANY point of the movie you want, or pause it, with a simple click. So that's not a big deal. However, as most of us know, Vista is a RAM hog and a half. The inital 1gb of RAM, while sufficent, will probably not satisfy you if you like to play games, or use big programs. I recommend buying more RAM. Next week I will be buying 2 2gb of RAM for $150 of Toshibas website. If you register your Laptop, you'll get a 15% off code, plus they are 10$ off already. So I'm saving $50 on them. But once I max out the RAM to 4GB, I have NO DOUBT this Laptop will run smoothly as ever.

All in all, this a good, quality laptop, especially for the price. I mean, how can you complain so much when you spent about $600?? If you want a laptop, and can't spend too much, this is the Laptop for you. At least it was for me. I love it.

Forget about the "black screen" problem that is/has been reported on the entire A200 line. Just download the BIOS flash file from Toshiba and install it. This laptops has more features and horsepower than most other PCs in it's price range. No comparison. I love it.

We picked this up retail for $399. We just wanted soemthing that could travel with us if we needed it too and to keep downstairs for wireless purposes. This has worked out great. Alot of complaints about the keyboard worried me, but we have had no issues. For the great price, it is a great laptop.

Before purchasing this computer, do a search for "Toshiba black screen" (aka "the black screen of death") - you'll find many entries. For no reason at all, the screen goes black - not black like off, but black with a light behind it. The only thing you can do to correct the problem is hold down the power button. When you power the computer back on, you get the option to start up normal or start up in safety mode.

Toshiba support is aware of the problem, but do not have a real "fix." They do have a work-around which is to set your computer to 100% performance which is not good for long term use of the computer.

Obviously this is very annoying when surfing the internet, but when it occurs while working on a document and you lose everything you have been working on, it is beyond annoying - it is purely unacceptable.

The Black Screen of Death occurred for me about once every 90 minutes (give or take 30 minutes).

Apparently, the problem occurs with many A200-series of Toshiba laptops (I had the A215-S6804 model).

Worked perfectly right out of the box. I do like a little more speed so I added 1gig of ram, now it runs like my other Toshiba laptop that I paid over a thousand dollars for. I would suggest to everyone to always purchase an "accidental plan" with any laptop. I worked in a repair center and it is very expensive if you drop the laptop or spill liquid on it. I consider Toshiba a very reliable brand. I've had my other laptop for 2 years and never had a problem with it other than my husband liked it so much I had to buy another one for me! Amazon service was excellent as usual, it was delivered before the estimated date. Amazon always has the best prices.

I have mostly good things to say about this computer, and I picked it up for $549.99 with free super saver shipping. The only improvement I can see is that it needs more memory, 1 GB is no enough to run Vista. I upgraded it to 4 GB and have no complaints. I'd recommend this computer.

We bought the Toshiba a215-s6804 from another source. Nearly immediately, we found that the screen would go black, but was clearly still holding power. Our only solution was to reboot the machine, losing everything we were working on. We exchanged the machine once and got a new one that has only done this once in the last 2 days - but it's still doing it.

I just want to reiterate what the other gentleman says. Based on hearing that Toshiba has no viable solution, I think we are going to look into a different machine. Its a shame too - because we really like the structure and features of this one.