Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite L305-S5907 15.4-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After much research I decided on the Toshiba Satellite L305-S5907. I compared it to the HP Touch which I was real excited about when it first came out. The only problem was the touch screen with the 4 GB or RAM and 320 Hard drive has a 22 inch screen which would make it impossible for me to use the computer the way I use my laptop. So I looked at the HP touch screen laptop which has a 12 inch screen. This was a problem for me since my previous laptop has a 12 inch screen and I hated. Also the HP touch laptop lacked the amount of memory I desired. So I started my quest for a laptop with the memory and RAM I desired for a reasonable price. I did not want a Dell because my previous laptop is a Dell and it sucks big time.

I checked CNET and some other websites and I also checked with a few computer geeks I know and the Toshiba got high praise. So I bought it and boy am I happy!!!

I love my laptop !!! I haven't had any problems with the vista home premium and the webcam feature helps me keep in touch with my daughter who is away at college. We've been using SKYPE every night !! The screen is clear. I haven't used all of the features yet. I've only had it for 2 weeks but I love the voice recognition software and the mouse pad has a great feature that lets you scroll up and down or side to side if you run your finger along the side or the bottom of the pad. Its great! Its much better than moving the arrow to the scroll bar and then scrolling. You can scroll from anywhere on the screen. I let my son use my laptop to type his report using the voice recognition software because he can't type and it would have taken him hours to type it on his own. He was amazed. The laptop is also pretty good looking. Its a nice dark blue. People thought I bought it because of the sleek design and color but that was just a bonus.

I would recommend this laptop to anyone

I have been enjoying this laptop a great deal. It has become my primary computer to which I have my monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, router & modem, and printer wired. The only thing I had to add, since it is a primary unit, is a USB hub because my keyboard, mouse, and printer use up the 3 USB ports and I needed 2 more for my external hard drive. If you don't need to plug in all that stuff, no worries.

I am a fan of the Toshiba brand anyway. My husband also has a Toshiba laptop with which we both have been very pleased, and we have other Toshiba electronics all of which have been excellent and durable. This new Toshiba is amazingly fast. Love having the additional memory and very large hard drive since this was charted to become my primary since I killed my desktop a couple weeks ago.

Another amazing thing I am finding is that it stays so cool! I was amazed. When I was setting it up I just had it sitting on one of my wire mesh laptop stands and even after 10 hours of use it was completely cool. That is no exaggeration. My secondary laptop, a Dell, doesn't get hot but it WILL get warm after an hour of use. I've had it sitting on one of those Rolodex mesh stands (those stands rock!) on my desk all week. I keep it turned on all day long, and it still never gets warm. This is encouraging as I think one of the worst things is to happen to a laptop is getting overheated so I was concerned knowing this would become my primary.

The screen is very nice and, since I am not into gaming or anything seriously graphics-intensive, perfectly good...bright and clear. The keyboard is very nice and plenty big. The touch pad and scrolly things are particularly good, in my opinion, because they have great sensitivity (it is adjustable) and I like the textured surface of the pad. It is a LOT nicer than the one on my Dell.

It is a very attractive laptop. The surface is black and glossy. The top of the lid is a lovely, deep blue.

I honestly have no complaints. If I would have wanted anything additional from this unit it would have been more USB ports. I found a really nice Belkin unit to add so it is no problem

Though I loved my previous laptop and used it with no complaints since November 2003, I feel like I was a caterpillar and now I'm a butterfly, using my new Toshiba L305D-S5581! Well, okay, I did have a complaint about how long it took my old PC to boot up and shut down, and was thrilled with my new Toshiba's faster accomplishments of those routine operations. I had expected slower instead of faster, due to VISTA and the additional programs which would be on the new laptop. I had XP on my old laptop. I like both versions of MS Windows OS, and can see the advantages of each, but VISTA is definitely the butterfly.

Even though many reviews have made what appear to have been valid complaints about products with the specifications this Toshiba (and other brands) has, I have not had any of those difficulties, and indeed have felt like wings have replaced my previously grounded slow motion.

I was foremost looking for a machine with at least 3 GB of SDRAM, and at least 200 GB HD. The choice of 3 GB of RAM was due to helpful reviews I've read on many pages for laptops on Amazon which have complained that Windows VISTA is slow with less RAM. What I have on this machine is absolutely fine for my needs.

Reviews have noted that not quite as much HD space is needed currently, with the market availability of USB drives which extend the PC's hard drive in a variety of ways, with nearly endless storage options... so I felt that 200 GB DH would be adequate, and it is, though I don't need to store lots of game or graphics programs on my PC, mostly just my manuscripts and MS WORD, AOL, and photos.

As to the complaints of current laptops being loaded with what is called crap ware or bloat ware, I have to say I agree somewhat with those complaints. I haven't yet been able to decide what I might need within the bloat ware offerings, and honestly can't decide which of the DVD players, CD writers, Wireless purveyors, etc., would be the ones I would want to use.

But what some reviews have pointed out exposes the trade off in this case, i.e., the reason certain LT's (laptops) can be offered at such good prices is that the companies who provide the plethora of extra programs pay for that advertising, thereby allowing the lower price offered by the company offering the machine. Given that trade off, I'm willing to take time to decide what I want to keep and discard among the huge number of colorful icons grinning at me from my desk top, hoping I'll click on them and purchase from their trial offerings.

Everything I have so far installed and begun using has been easy for me, not a computer wiz, to accomplish, though I'm very thankful for the reviewers who mentioned the Windows VISTA habit of always asking via a dialogue box pop-up if the user or "administrator" (me) initiated the action. Even though this pop up sometimes feels disruptive, I've become more comfortable knowing I will be asked and informed before uploading and installation will occur from the hordes of automatic updates seemingly offered by everyone on every program on my computer.

I was thankful to the reviewers who mentioned that with VISTA drivers are often needed for installations of programs and hardware. I loved the Plug & Play capacity with XP, but can easily see why the incredible increase of hardware and software might have caused the necessity of a specific CD driver to be used for installation, and so far all programs and equipment have come with necessary drivers. The reviews, however, alerted me to this necessity, so I wasn't surprised by this seeming backward change from XP to VISTA, which to me, now, is clearly a forward motion taking into account the current and growing progress in the computer industry, and the plethora of variety available.

I was able to easily install the driver of the HP All in One (with FAX) I purchased, along with the wireless mouse and USB hub. I hope to have time to review some of those, too, because I'm butterfly thrilled with each of them!

I want to conclude by thanking the huge number of reviewers on Amazon, who commented on various brands of notebook PC's. Each of those reviewers was directly and practically helpful to me in one way or another. Personally, I would rather read Amazon customer reviews on computer hardware, before reading PC magazines or other more complex sources of information. For me, reviews from everyday people, purchasers/users of specific pieces of equipment, say just what I need to know, in an easily comprehensible language. I do a lot of research on Amazon's buying pages, under customer reviews.

Flying off to ready more of my novels for publication on KINDLE, I remain a wing-ed author at your reading service!

Linda G. Shelnutt
Author of several books on Amazon's KINDLE and Amazon Shorts

First off, deduct one star for Vista. Man, this OS deserves all the bad press it receives. Deduct another star for where the power supply attaches to the notebook, way too close to the drawer of the DVD/CD drive. Aside from these issues, the notebook performs admirably, despite Vista, for those tasks such as web surfing, email and non graphics-critical applications. Out of the box the notebook would see my FIOS router but refused to connect to the internet. After reloading the entire image from the backup disks, I could access the internet. Toshiba tech support suggested the fix and does not advise downgrading to XP since there are driver issues that XP will not be able to resolve. Vista deserves a 2 star deduction but overall this notebook is good value despite its OS. Yes, there are several included apps that you may want to uninstall but that's no big deal.
The notebook can be purchased for much less than the Amazon price so do some Googling if you're interested.

I purchased this Toshiba Satellite L305-S5907 laptop three weeks ago from Amazon and I've been impressed. Amazon shipped my machine quickly via UPS. It was on sale for about 24 hours so I got mine for $579 with no tax, and shipping was included. This is the best price I've found on a laptop with these specs. The Toshiba is fast, quiet, two pounds lighter than my 7 year old Dell, and looks great. I've had no troubles with Vista Premium working with this machine. My only complaints are the glare on the glossy screen, if you're outside, and the glossy plastic case, which looks good, but shows fingerprints easily. I don't play alot of games on my computer and this is certainly not a gaming machine with a separate graphics card. I have a Wii for that. It also isn't a television with a Blu Ray player and 17" widescreen. I have a LCD TV for that. The 15.4" widescreen is perfect for my use and looks great. You could spend $1200 for an entry level Mac but it would have much less memory, a smaller hard drive and just another Intel processor. In my opinion Mac's aren't worth the $600 premium just to look cool.

You can't go wrong with the Toshiba.

I was looking for a laptop to supplement my aging desktop. I download a lot of music and wanted a decent size hard drive. Larger hard drives tended to increase the price and I was pleased to find the Toshiba L305 because of it's larger hard drive (320 GB)at a hard to beat price. The 4 GB RAM, and the Dual Core processor make the Toshiba fast and efficient. The 15.4 screen is bright and clear. It is a fairly large and heavy for a laptop, but I mostly use it at home, so it is perfect for me. I was also pleased with the service from Amazon. It came quickly and was easy to set up out of the box. For the price and features, I don't think this laptop can be beat.

Toshiba is the best in laptop computers, my first laptop is a Toshiba, and with 5 years of use it is still running like new, I just replaced it with this one to be updated and I have no complains about it, it is even better than the first one. And what about the price, it is a bargain!!!

This was an amazing buy on paper, but the review I'm giving it now is vastly different from the ones I gave when the machine was new. I've had time to get to know the product and no longer have stars in my eyes about how great it ran out of the box. After a little over a year, I can say without hesitation that no one should purchase this computer.

Over the course of normal use (never kept on for an excessive amount of time, stored and cared for fastidiously), the motherboard on this machine burned out twice in the first ten months. And then again, one month out of warranty. So that's that.

Warranty repairs were simple enough through a local Toshiba outlet, which is a service they've since discontinued, and most problems now require shipping the computer back to Toshiba in, I believe, Kentucky.

But the motherboard went again halfway through my thirteenth month of ownership. Warranty expired. Nothing to be done. Yes, I could pay to have it replaced, but what would be the point? Am I going to do that two or three times a year from now on, just for the privilege of using the computer I purchased?

I don't think so, nor am I likely to buy another Toshiba computer in the future. My story of woe brought out too high a number of similar stories from former Toshiba owners in my circle.I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I'm insulted by the shoddiness of this product. I've been taken advantage of by the manufacturer, and I don't appreciate it.

I purchased the Satellite L305-s5907 less than 1 year ago and have had to send it in for repair TWICE! The hard drive had to be replaced both times!! I have no recourse but to purchase an extended warranty, which costs about half the price of the laptop!!!!!!! I do not want to spend another $300 just to make sure it's covered the NEXT TIME!!! I am sorely disappointed with Toshiba :(

I've had this laptop for about 8 months now and it's still going strong. This sucker is fast! My last two computers were both hewlett packard desktops and they both crashed frequently and weren't as fast as this little sucker is.

People complain about Vista but I like it. (I recommend using Chrome for your web browser)

One thing: For the first four months of using this, the sound was horrible. The speakers were distorting all the time and when I would use the headphones I'd hear this really low end swooshing sound. I finally did some research online and found an audio driver on Toshiba's web site that fixed the problem. I can't remember what it was called but you should be able to find it.

One thing I'm not nuts about is the big Toshiba logo on the cover. I'd like to see that changed. It's also upside down so when the top is open, other people can read the Toshiba right side up.

Overall, a great computer.

Update, Jan 3, 2010:
At about the 10 1/2 month mark it started crashing all the time and it wouldn't let me reinstall the OS. I remember slamming the lid really hard a few weeks earlier accidentally and things started going wrong around then. It was still within warranty so I sent it in. All I had to do was call Toshiba and they had me drop it off at the UPS store and they packed it and shipped it for free. Got it back about 8 days later but it crashed immediately. Sent it back again but this time Toshiba replaced the hard drive. They also replaced the base which had a scratch on it along with the charger input which I had damaged accidentally right after I got it and it had been bothering me ever since. I didn't ask them to do this so I was pretty happy about it. This was about a month ago. It's been running great since. I appreciate Toshiba's customer service. Now I have my fingers crossed that this baby keeps on ticking.