Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite M65-S809 17" Laptop (Intel Pentium M Processor 740 (Centrino), 512 MB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, DVD SuperMulti Drive)

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

 

 

I have had the MS65 machine for 3 months now and mostly I really love it. Its big - approximately 7 lbs, and about 1.4 inches thick. I travel with it a lot - so if it were lighter I would love it even more. But its very fast, has a huge, fast hard drive, and I like its appearance (the copper colored cover gives it nice appeal from the bland designs most laptops have.)

Probably its best feature is the display - at 1440 x 900, 17" diagnol, the display is huge for a laptop. This allows me to display two documents side by side, which is a huge plus. Also the screen is gorgeous - deep rich color that is very true to life. Its wonderful as a road machine for visual designers or anyone who really carea about image quality. In fact, I have used an external 19" LCD display made by Phillips, and the built in display on this machine is much much better - the Phillips lacks in color depth, contrast, and refresh speed when compared to the Toshiba's built in display.

The worst feature is the keyboard - very stiff, you have to really pound the keys. Its full size keyboard, but the touch is not at all light.

I have 1 gig of RAM, and run demanding applications like PhotoShop with no problem. And it just rips through the typical productivity tools - spreadsheets, Powerpoint, Word, etc.

The DVD burner is great, but the supplied software is a joke.If you want to drag and drop files to burn to DVD, you have to set a switch on/off in the control panel. A real inconvenience. But I bought a copy of Roxio Media Creator for $70, and that handles all the drag n drop capabilities just fine.

As near as I can tell, the headphone jack that comes with this machine is very mediocre - the sound from my pretty good Senheiser head phones is not what I would want it to be.

The built in wireless networking works flawlessly, and often picks up networks 1/4 mile away!

All in all, I love this machine. I wish it were lighter, I wish the keyboard was better, but all in all one of the best choices out there for heavy duty graphics while reasonable in price.

I have had this computer for one year now and have just had the keyboard replaced for THE THIRD TIME! In desperation, I started reading reviews for this laptop.

I have now seen that the keyboard is a consistent problem. I wish it were just a matter of getting used to pressing harder, but the problem is more than that. Trained as a legal secretary a zillion years ago, I know how to type, so it's not a matter of missing the keys or pressing too lightly.

As I am typing this review, every third word or so has to be retyped because a key is not registering! Sometimes I have to bang a key three or four times before it registers! (It also has a jumping cursor which moves and enters keystrokes indescriminately around the screen!)

It does have great graphics and speed. The numeric keypad was the main reason I purchased it, as I do a lot of tables. However, I am at my wit's end with this darn keyboard problem and hope that Toshiba will either fix it right or allow me to exchange it!