Customer Reviews

Toshiba Satellite T235D-S1340 TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Laptop (Black)

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

 

 

The good - this is a very thin and light laptop. I also like the integrated card reader.
The bad, in random order - it doesn't have any hardware volume control; I wasn't aware of that and I wouldn't buy another laptop without volume buttons. Finding the volume control using the touchpad is quite annoying especially when you open a webpage that has some stupidly loud sound background that you want to turn off.
The screen is too shiny; it reflects a lot, even if you don't have a light source behind you. Also it has a weird contrast and white on white looks awfull. Maybe this can be adjusted somehow, but so far I really hate it. For example, on this very page I am writing now there's almost no difference between the white page background and grey the scroll bar. Very hard on the eyes.

And I don't like windows 7. I don't understand why Microsoft believes that changing the location of certain items means progress. There's no improvement over XP, only the interface is organized differently meaning that in order to accomplish a certain action that I knew how to do in XP, now I have to learn it again, doing the clicks somewhere else, doing 6 clicks instead of 3, etc. The final result is the same... how I hate that.
I would rather install XP but Toshiba doesn't provide drivers. I suppose I could find them online on each manufacturer's website, but why should I have to go through all that trouble? Hey, Toshiba, please provide XP drivers for all components, will you? Thanks.
The laptop is not very fast - it struggles with rendering 14 megapixel RAW files in Picasa or Lightroom almost like the old DELL Latitude D610 it replaced. I know this is not a computer for intensive photo editing, but still I was expecting to see some significant improvement over the old DELL. There is some, but not much.
And last, but not least, don't be fooled by the long battery life claims. The 6 hours claimed - this is WITHOUT WI-FI, people. So if you want to spend 6 hours working in MS Office or watching videos on battery, that may work, but 6 hours of web browsing, no way. It is more like 3.
However, for the price, I don't think I could have found something much better at this size. The trend these days seems to make laptops as big as TV these days, I am not sure who wants to hold a widescreen TV on their lap, probably many people considering that most laptops are 16' and 17' or more, but not me. I wanted a normal size laptop and I am happy with the purchase. If they could only put a volume knob, a non-shiny screen and windows XP I would give it a 4 stars. If battery life on WIFI was 6 hours, that would gain the 5th star.

I initially liked this computer because it was small and light. However, the hard drive has crashed every few months for a total of 3 times within an 8 month period. The computer has spent more time at the Toshiba repair center than actually being used by me. On top of the computer's poor performance, I am incredibly disappointed with the toshiba customer service. Despite the fact that this one has crashed THREE times in eight months, they refuse to replace my computer with a new one and insist on refurbishing the one I have even though there is clearly a problem.

The price may be tempting, but if you want a computer that works, do not purchase this one. If you'd like to throw $600 down the drain like I did, then this is the computer for you.