Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite A355-S6924 16.0-Inch Laptop

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

 

 

This is my second Toshiba laptop. Number one is around 4 years old and still works well.

This review is more about the A355 chassis, than this exact spec laptop, and should apply to just about every one of the laptops in this series whether they run AMD or Intel chips.

The first view is that the materials are just plain flat out gorgeous. From the shiny exterior, to the semi rounded base, the two large chrome mouse buttons, the nicely integrated Harmon Kardon speakers, the illuminated touch areas, the big beautiful monitor, and those shiny keys. Yes this is one very pretty computer.

Under that pretty hood are some interesting specs. It used to be incredibly rare to see an eSATA port on any computer, let alone a laptop. Well this one has exactly that - an eSATA port that doubles as a USB port. Nice option to hook up external hard drives. It also includes an iLink, Firewire, or IEEE-1394 port - an incredible rarity (even Apple dropped this port). The audio ports and volume control are on the front, nicely placed. There's absolutely no ports on the rear. There's also an express card slot (not a PCMCIA slot, but EXPRESS card slot) and a multi flash memory card reader (they've dropped CF from the list). It does not include Bluetooth - a very strange omission since every single bluetooth adapter uses the Toshiba stack to run. Use either of these adapters, they work perfectly: IOGear GBU421 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Micro Adapter or Cirago BTA3210 Class 2 Micro Bluetooth Adapter (Black Tip) - both are outstanding miniscule adapters.

Toshiba stuffed 4Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard drive into this big baby. Those are some pretty nice features in a laptop this inexpensive. Those Harmon Kardon speakers sound very nice.

You'll either hate this or love it, and fortunately you can turn this off if you hate it. The Toshiba name, a little band above the scratchy navigation pad, and the media buttons all light up white (pretty bright at that). I think it looks pretty cool, but others have hated all those lights.

The monitor, oh that monitor is gorgeous. Movies pop, they look absolutely fantastic on this computer. It's a nice big screen. Yes it is a gloss finish and you do get some reflections here or there, but generally it's not bad.

The keys are all glossy and the fanatical among you might not like all the visible fingerprints, but I think most will get over that quickly. There is just a ton of room to put your hands to type and use the computer. That surface in front is sweet for a palm rest.

Function-wise, this computer is a decent performer. Nobody is buying this to run heavy games or render video - it won't do those things. But for the occasional game, the occasional video edit, you'll score well here.

Do note, this computer runs Windows Vista Premium 64-Bit. Please don't be afraid of that operating system. I'm running 64 bit on two computers and it runs just beautifully. There is almost no new hardware that won't run under 64 bit these days. It's a rock solid platform. And that OS allows all 4Gb of memory to be seen and used (32 bit tops out at 3Gb). And if you don't believe me, type this into google - pcmag 64 bit computing. Read the first article in that hit list.

This is no lightweight computer. It's a big, pretty heavy laptop. Great for around the house. Not something you would travel everywhere with. But it is portable. Heat generation is nothing extreme. It does pull air in from below, so be careful about couches or beds plugging those holes.

It's a good solid fast computer. There's a bit of fan noise, nothing huge, but you will know the machine is running. I hate to comment on battery life, that's so dependent on how bright you make the screen, processor speed settings and the like. I got a good solid 2 hours of hitting it very hard at max everything. You could probably get a good 3 hours, maybe 4 at more conservative settings.

Something to keep in mind, Toshiba ships all their laptops full of bloat-ware. It's a really good idea to remove it all. Almost none of it is necessary. There are two websites that will clear all that garbage out of your computer. It's explained in a great article at PCMag. Type this into google, PCMag make the most out of your new pc. The first hit will be a fantatstic article on how to remove the garbage.

Overall, this is a big, beautiful, good sounding, heavy, hard working, well priced laptop.


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June 2009 Update - my big old football playing son managed to crack the display. Nothing Toshiba could have done to prevent this from happening. He has no idea how it cracked, my guess he rolled over on top of it when he fell asleep. It was fixed under a 3 year no fault extended warranty. Thank you warranty! The top is a bit flexible, but that's not the reason it cracked. Just be a bit more careful with this thing, they are not toughbooks!

Good hardware configuration, esp. for the price; excellent for casual use. I would not recommend this machine to a tech savvy user for professional use. However, it has problems that require a better understanding of PCs' 'guts' and patience in solving those problems. I paste a few paragraphs below my review of the A355-S6925 model that gives full details of problems encountered so far.

It is the best compromise that I could find between price and features. Bluetooth drivers are in it but you have to add the chip ($5 dongle and taking up a USB port). If you use a non-Toshiba dongle, the stack expires so you have to find/install a different stack. The worst compromise is it comes with almost no software, but that seems to be standard practice in the industry now.

My complaints are the touch pad interface is intermittent making it sometimes too sensitive and other times I cannot drag the cursor anywhere, and the cursor 'disappears' or locks up when the memory is busy. The integrated graphics and dynamic RAM allocation can be smarter; I still have to manually clear cache to retain performance when using graphics-intensive applications.

Read the one-star review and the responses to it about the cursor jumping to different parts of the screen during typing. Those people say it's the touch pad picking up static from the thumb. If that's indeed the reason for that annoying error, then it's a design flaw. Other vendors' touch pads don't do this. Further investigation has shown that there is a checkbox in the touchpad preferences where you can turn the pad off during typing. What a weird option.
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Review of a very similar model: Toshiba Satellite A355-S6925 16.0-Inch Laptop
I bought this machine a month ago because its hardware config looked good at a good price, I thought. I thought I can live with Vista, maybe upgrade to XP7 later this year. I rated it highly at Toshiba's web site and here at Amazon. Now, after a month's experience, I have buyer's regret.

Toshiba's pricing strategy of near-zero pre-loaded software (Vista only) means a lot of the cost of ownership is 'shifted forward' meaning you have to buy almost everything, including a bluetooth stack. This is an excellent example of nickel and diming customers to death -- not a good marketing strategy.

This machine does NOT come with bluetooth support, you have to add a dongle. But I thought that like Windows XP SP2, Vista has the stack included. Sadly, no, it is not true. The situation gets worse. Toshiba does not use the 'standard' Windows stack but has a proprietary stack. If it detects a non-Toshiba dongle, the Toshiba OEM license expires. You have to uninstall the Toshiba stack and find/install a compatible stack. Sigh.

It gets worse. I was pretty unhappy that I was unable to install the official Microsoft Office Suite. After going a few layers deep in hardware configuration dialog boxes, I find that the CD-ROM driver is in error, it could not find a fix and, maybe this is a separate problem, the system cannot detect the drive!!!!! No driver download available from Toshiba's tech support web site. Talking to a live agent, she pointed me to a secure site where I was able to download a filter that seemingly fixed the problem. This is NOT the way a new PC should be. I have never encountered such a problem before, in 20-some years of using computers.

I now rate this PC only 2 stars because of the stupid Toshiba policy of NOT including a free to the end user, perpetual end user license to its bluetooth stack. The CD-ROM driver problem worsened my opinion. BTW, a third-party driver diagnostic program detected 26 out-of-date or erroneous drivers.

Toshiba's stupid marketing made two more bad mistakes:

1. The license to the stack is for the manufacturers of bluetooth dongles, not for end-users like me, so end-users are at a dead end. I suppose I could buy a new dongle that has a Toshiba license instead of using the dongle I already own.

2. End users who are not IT-savvy won't know what the hell this licensing esoterica means. There is no link from Toshiba's 'expired' message to ANY help for end users to solve this problem. On Toshiba's user forum, the question "How to buy a license..." is posted, but 'locked' so no one can post comments. There is NO ANSWER given, such as "buy xyz dongles because they have the necessary Toshiba license." That's a missed opportunity to co-market with OEMs that have bought a Toshiba license. I've searched the web and THERE IS NO ANSWER elsewhere.

Fortunately, I know that BlueSoleil, a vendor of bluetooth software, will support the dongle that I already have. After registration, I downloaded BlueSoleil 6, a stack that does all the things that the Toshiba stack does. And it doesn't seem to conflict with the Toshiba stack which I did not uninstall. Unfortunately, BlueSoleil is available for free for only a 15-day trial after which BlueSoleil will transfer files of up to 2 MB. The good marketing practice demonstrated by BlueSoleil is it gives you a link to its online store where you can buy a license for $29.99. They help you to solve the problem, not like Toshiba.

I am shocked and disappointed that Toshiba, a well regarded consumer electronics brand, does such a poor job of end-user marketing and support.

Oh, while I'm at it, let me warn you that Toshiba tech support, while free, is NOT AT ALL KNOWLEDGEABLE. F'instance, I called to say that I couldn't find the pre-loaded free trial of Microsoft Office. My call got dropped, no call-back. Had to go through the n-level deep voice messaging, call another number, again, to get to another random support person who suggested searching the hard drive for hidden sectors. The software was there. AND, after hassling the guy for a recovery disk, threatening to talk to his supervisor, he said he'd waive the rules and send me one. A month later, no disk arrived. Finally, a friend told me that that I don't need to buy Toshiba's recovery CD because the machine has a utility for you to create your own recovery CD. Sigh.

Contrary to the description of this item, it does not include an HDMI port. I checked a number of different sources describing this machine, including Toshiba's description of this machine, none of them include an HDMI port.

I repartitioned the harddrive and I am dual booting windows and Ubuntu 9.04.
Battery life under ubuntu seems better than other reviewers have quoted for windows - I got over 3 hours easily. Overall this feels like a solid laptop, and runs much cooler than my macbook used to. The speakers are pretty decent, USB ports both sides, the multimedia buttons are nice (and worked with no tweaking in Ubuntu!), the scrolling from the trackpad is also nice (also worked with Ubuntu right away, no erratic movement - just perfect).
Suspend and hibernate are working perfectly too (which has been problematic for me with linux - but not with Ubuntu 9.04). For the price this is fantastic - linux fans - throw on Ubuntu and this machine is flying!

Downsides? Going from fullscreen can sometimes cause the X server to crash in linux. Hopefully an update will fix that - but it's only happened a few times to me, so I'll live with it. Update: I had been using the 32-bit version of linux with PAE extensions - when I turned that off, stability returned. So, I may move to the 64-bit linux, but for now all is well. The sound thumbwheel on the front can be a little unresponsive at times. But for the money this machine is amazing. I still can't believe it's got a dual-layer DVD burner!

Maybe I'll delete the windows, but it's handy if I need to doing anything with my iPhone. Vista seemed to work fine - but I agree with other reviewers on the bloatware - disgusting.

I purchased this laptop in mid April '09. The screen is very nice, it's not as heavy as I thought it would be and overall it runs pretty fast. The cons are the glossy keyboard and exterior show all fingerprints and I constantly have to wipe it down. It is a pretty dumb design to have a keyboard that is so shiny. It takes a long time to stop accessing the hard drive when booting up, even when I deleted lots of bloatware, which is kind of annoying. Also, it get super warm. I start sweating when I type for extended periods. I called Toshiba and they think this may be related to a battery issue, so it may not be the case with each laptop. All-in-all it runs very well I/O ports are laid out conveniently.

I just received this laptop after my previous laptop was unable to perform. My business is to create websites and logos, and I needed a machine that had more memory.

For the price, you get a lot of memory, a crystal clear screen, and the sound is wonderful! My old laptop had horrible speakers, and I had to connect it to external speakers in order to hear movies I would watch.

I'm looking forward to exploring all of the features of this computer, though I am already enjoying the quicker response time when running graphics programs.

It also happens to be good looking. Yes, it is large, and not the lightest piece of equipment, but that happens to be what I prefer. I would recommend this item to a person who needs more than a basic laptop, but does not want to break the bank.

This Toshiba laptop computer looks beautiful but come with a battery that last only for one day. The first day I use the laptop to create a copy of the rescue disk and the applications and drivers. The next day when I boot up the laptop and I find that the battery has 0% charge and cannot take charge, I have to use the laptop with the power adapter plug in. I have used many laptop computers before and the batteries last at least 2 years and this one is the worst I've ever met.

The mousepad on this machine is FAR too sensitive, causing the cursor to jump uncontrollably, all over the place. The only way to get it to stop, was to disable the mousepad, thus losing an important feature. Fortunately, I prefer to use a wireless mouse anyway, so the loss is not huge - for me. If you prefer a mousepad, as some people do, this is not the machine for you. On the other hand, the tech support (with East European accents, but claiming to be in the Philippines) diagnosed the problem and told me how to turn off the pad, in a relatively painless manner. Everything else about the unit seems to work OK, but given a choice, I would rather have XP than Vista. I am hopeful...

Really nice computer setup for the money. Intel's Dual Core processor T6600/2.2 GHz with 4 GB RAM loaded and Vista Premium 64 bit OS with a 16" screen and built-in Webcam and Mic. N wireless and adequate 250 GB HD. If you really need more storage, I generally prefer an external HD for big stuff. Runs cool and is fast and powerful for a laptop selling at $650. delivered.

When I bought this computer, I thought it was a great deal. I have had it for a year now and it has had more downside than upside. Performance and storage has been great. the setup of the computer has been a nightmare. When typing, it is easy to accidentally touch the touch pad which will put the cursor back to where it began. The touch pad is so sensative that when on the web, you will send you back a page or two just by simply rubbing your finger across it as you are trying to move the cursor. I have had too many issues when trying to do web work and had to start all over just because of the stupid touch pad! Overall, worst computer ever! I think I have decided that I will never by a Toshiba product again just because of the problems this computer has created!