Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite L355-S7831 17-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 Processor, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased two of these as business laptops. Overall performance is good and the screen has moderate to good clarity. I have primarily used Dell laptops until now and find the keys and think pad buttons on the Toshiba to be a little bit cheap but they perform well enough for the price of the laptop. One annoyance is a single pixel in the screen that goes to red when the screen is showing darker colors and not enough of an annoyance to return/exchange. The webcam is grainy but I don't intend on using it. Excessive bloatware took a while to remove but it can be done and this is a consistent industry standard. I will be purchasing a third and will be getting an HP for comparison. The three star rating is for good solid performance. A four rating would require more of an investment in a laptop and a five would be a complete custom job.

I bought this computer for my father in law. I chose it because of the huge hard drive for a laptop(250GB), the 2.0 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core Processors, and the 17" widescreen and full keyboard (has the numbers to the right). At my house we are a Mac family, but my father in law is 75 and has only known windows so we decided to purchase a pc for him. For the price, we got an awesome computer. It has the same processors as my 20"imac, and for half the price.

The only cons I have with this laptop is that:
(a) it's a pc (we just love macs)
(b) it runs on Vista (at least it's premium edition).

Other than that, if your looking for a lot of computer for a little money, then this is it!

My father in law only uses it to surf the web, check email, and look at pictures of the family we send. So for him, it works out perfect.

I am completely satisfied with both the product and the website. My wife has never been more excited about a gift ever. Thank you.
Rod clark

This compouter is just like a big fancy desktop. It has all the bells and whistles. The screen is clear and easy on the eyes. Keyboard is the same as I was used to on my desktop. Best of all the price. Very reasonal for a machine of this quality.

This laptop comes with a lot of features for the money.($580) The wireless n card is nice and the 3gb of memory with dual core makes it easy to have a couple VMs running. The hard drive is large enough(250gb) to serve as a temporary repository for your pictures/movies/videos while you are away from secure storage and the card reader is handy to have. This laptop is excellent for basic "home" style use: browsers, office applications, basic video/pic editing. Its biggest shortfall is easily the video card. It is NOT a good laptop if you want to play a relatively graphically intense game(ex. fallout3)

I dual boot vista and ubuntu on this laptop. I purchased 64 bit vista ultimate for it. 64 bit Ubuntu(ibex) had drivers for everything right from the start, but I had to go get drivers for the wired network, wireless network and video chipsets for 64 bit vista. Toshiba's site had all of them so they were not difficult to find, just make sure you can get them from another computer since you won't have network connectivity until you do.

NOTE: The pictured product shows a light grey chassis. Mine came a nice shiny black. I like it, but it requires constant cleaning to keep from looking smeary.

Pros:
- large, bright screen
- reasonable resolution(1440x960)
- good amount of memory(3gb)
- 802.11n built-in wireless
- low price for the feature set
- 64 bit dual core processor
Cons:
- low power graphics(Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M)
- included 32 bit OS on a 64 bit system
- black is not very dark
- short battery life(~2-3hrs)
- fan is somewhat loud

The above picture does not represent what the item actually looks like. The laptop is actually a black-blue color with a black interior.

I am really happy with toshiba products and this is a fine laptop. It is well constructed and the screen is large as life. There are two compaints or rather improvements I rould recommend: the touchpad is so sensitive that I can't type over the top of it as I reach for the keys, it sends the coursor flying so I rarely can type a full sentence without resetting the cursor. It would be great if I could turn the blooming thing off so I could use my mouse instead. Also, it is unusually heavy. I still give it a 5 rating, Harvey Bragg

The brief assessment

The Satellite L355 is a large, heavy portable - I can't make myself call it a LAP-top - machine that provides sufficient computing power to run Vista in full Aero mode, decent hard disk storage, good 17-inch display, adequate IO, a somewhat subpar near-full-size keyboard and a few bells and whistles such as 801.11g Wi-fi and integrated Webcam and microphone. The bundled free software includes Microsoft Works, Skype, some games and some annoying '60-day-trial' bloatware such Norton 360.

Overall, this is a good machine if travel is not its main purpose and if the relatively low price is factored in. It will replace a basic desktop once a mouse is added.


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Detailed review

Delivery and physical setup
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The 'laptop' comes securely packaged in a relatively small box. The package is easy to open and there isn't a lot of assembly required. Besides the laptop's body, there is the power supply, a couple of CDs and not much else.

Specs
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- Dual-core Intel T3400 processor at 2.16 GHz
- 3GB SDRAM expandable to 4GB
- 250GB hard drive
- 17" display
- 802.11b/g Wi-fi
- DVD drive
- Webcam + microphone
- 3 USB 2.0 ports
- Modem
- Ethernet port
- RGB monitor port
- 5-in-1 Bridge Media Adapter slot that supports Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital, MMC and xD media
- Near full-size keyboard with numeric keypad
- Touchpad

On the Vista performance benchmark, the Satellite scores a 3.3 with 'graphics' accounting for its lowest scores - 3.3 for Aero and 3.4 for 3D business and gaming and the CPU (5.1) and the hard drive (5.3) being the highest.

Setup
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Vista Setup begins as soon as the power button is pressed and it completes quickly. Once an account is created and after given permission, the Satellite was able to quickly find and join my Wi-fi network and download and install the latest mostly Vista updates - over 40 of them.

To my surprise, there wasn't a lot of bloatware, Norton 360 60-day trial being the most annoying of them all - its window pops up and it can't be closed, the only apparent option being to run the setup. I was able to get rid of it by immediately removing it and other unwanted 'free' or 'free trial' offers such as NetZero before touching their setup processes. The Google Toolbar installed itself before asking but a 'thank you' pops up when it's finished.

Explorer and Windows Media Player are present but it was easy to install my favorite browser (Chrome) and relegate the Explorer to the second-tier, 'backup browsers' status.

Once the Norton 360 is removed, Vista begins to complain about its lacking virus protection. One reasonable truly free offer, and this is what I installed, was Avira. Once Avira was installed, I was able to register it with Defender and Vista stopped complaining.

Other pre-installed but not '60-day trial' packages included are Picassa and Google Desktop. They can be easily downloaded off the Net but I don't mind them being there since they do not interact intrusively with the user.

Operation and Ergonomics
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As I mentioned already, the keyboard is a little unusual. While large, some of the keys are not where I would expect them - the Fn and Ctrl keys, for example are switched as compared with my familiar Thinkpad layout, the shapes of the 'Backspace' and 'Tab' are a little odd and so is the layout of the top row function keys. I would not type my next novel on this keyboard. Being a spoiled Thinkpad user, I missed the little knob that controls the mouse pointer movements. The touch pad works but it doesn't work for me. I wasn't comfortable until I attached a Logitech Nano cordless mouse by inserting its little dongle into one of the 3 available USB ports.

In my opinion, the display is the best part in the Satellite. It's large and it's bright. Wide-screen DVD movies play great on it but, sadly, this being a Toshiba (not a Sony) the optical drive does not support Blu-ray.

The integrated Webcam works well with apps such as Google Chat or Skype and it's well integrated and easy to use.

The Satellite weight - really, really heavy - does not make it suited for frequent travel. Its lacking a docking station add-on does not make it a good telecommuting choice.
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Rating and evaluation

The Satellite 355's size and weight do not make it a good choice for anyone looking for a traditional 'laptop'. However, anyone looking for a 'sometimes portable desktop' that integrates just about everything other than the mouse, this can be a good compromise. This is exactly what I wanted for one of my sons and I am therefore happy with my purchase.

We purchased this laptop for our daughter who is going to be going to college this fall. For the price (579.99), it is a great value. The 17 inch screen makes it a bit big, but she says she loves it. For what she is going to be using it for, it is a great computer.

Great laptop, mice features. I like the 17" screen but it is a bit heavy. Update: Power connection jack which is connected direct to system board broke after six months, I glued it back with gorilla glue, seemed to work. Then when computer was only 2 years old, power supply died. I replaced it with a Dell, removed hard drive to extract data and then used for backup. Pretty sure its my last Toshiba