how are Toshiba's laptops?

has anybody had any outstandingly good or bad experiences with toshiba notebook computers? i really want to get a notebook computer and after deciding against a dell due to price, i looked elsewhere and came up with this which seems like a killer good deal on a fast cpu and plenty of ram:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...mm=ST&plin=Portables&pfam=Satellite&pmod=1900

can someone give me some input, thoughts, comments, concerns, anything? i probably won't be buying right away but i want to get a good feel for the market before i go out throwing away over a grand.

TIA

jeff

Before throwing Dell out the window for a laptop, consider their refurbs. I am typing this on my refurb I8200 w/512 MB DDR, 1.7 P4-M, 40 GB HDD, 15in Dell UltraSharp monitor, CDRW, and Radeon 9000 Mobility w/64MB of ram. All for only $1450. Everything in this notebook is upgradeable.

Look around at their refurbs. Sometimes you will find a good deal.

Oh, and I hear toshiba has some very nice notebooks. I am just speaking about the dell from experience.

If you plan on running on batteries a lot most of em run at 1.2GHz to conserve energy, unless you are ripping, or burning. But that shortens the battery time considerably.

Hope that helped you.

gruven said:

Before throwing Dell out the window for a laptop, consider their refurbs. I am typing this on my refurb I8200 w/512 MB DDR, 1.7 P4-M, 40 GB HDD, 15in Dell UltraSharp monitor, CDRW, and Radeon 9000 Mobility w/64MB of ram. All for only $1450. Everything in this notebook is upgradeable.

Look around at their refurbs. Sometimes you will find a good deal.

Oh, and I hear toshiba has some very nice notebooks. I am just speaking about the dell from experience.

If you plan on running on batteries a lot most of em run at 1.2GHz to conserve energy, unless you are ripping, or burning. But that shortens the battery time considerably.

Hope that helped you.

Click to expand...

same thing, here is 2 links auction at dell and refurb I have had a refurb for a long time and would suggest it to anyone
http://www.dellauctions.com/
http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/products/line_notebooks.htm

When you go to the refurb section, you have to search for a little while. It is updated in real time, and they are always adding stuff. I had to search and wait 2 hours before finding the one I want.

It is also easier if you are going to buy a refurb, is to get one with a smaller video card, and less ram. You can buy the video card through dell's spare parts department, and the ram through crucial. Now, just gotta find out what to do with the GeForce 4 Go card I have lying here extra, lol.

you would save more on upgrade parts by going on ebay or any else other than dell their way over priced buy you can use them to get you the part numbers and max options your dell can take

http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11178360

Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 1.8GHz - M, featuring Intel® SpeedStep® technology for optimized battery life; 512MB DDR SDRAM for multitasking power, expandable to 1.0GB

15" XGA TFT-LCD display with 1024 x 768 resolution

30.0GB (4200 rpm) hard drive; DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive (8x max. DVD-ROM, 8x8x24 CD-RW)

ATI RADEON 7500 graphics with 32MB SDRAM video memory; S-video and VGA outputs

IEEE 1394 and USB ports for high-speed digital data transfer and mobile digital imaging capabilities

Integrated 10/100 Ethernet card; V.92 high-speed modem; built-in stereo speakers

Built-in 802.11b wireless networking (requires an wireless access point or other compatible 802.11b wireless device)

Weighs 5.8 lbs./about 1.2" thin for lightweight portability; built-in LiIon battery

Windows XP Home Edition operating system preinstalled

$999, according to www.techbargains.com there's a $100 rebate, dropping it to $899, you might look into this deal.

I have had good experiences with both Toshiba and Dell laptops in the past.
My most recent experience with Toshiba is not quite so good however: Windows XP proved to be a large part of the problem- SP1 fixed a bunch of stability and hardware problems, but I did have to send the pc in for repair.
Quite a few things were done/replaced and it was better afterwards but I still am not impressed.

A friend of mine was looking at portables and I advised him to get a Dell. He has had no complaints....yet

thanks for the input guys, i'll continue to search around.

jeff

I have a Toshiba Satellite that's still running strong after a year of beating the crap out of it. It did come with XP Home installed, but I took care of that problem with a reformat.

Toshibas always seemed, to me, to be a good mix of features, price, and reliability. IBM's are the most solid, but also cost a fortune. Compaq laptops are pretty good.

I wasn't overly impressed with the quality of Dell's laptops, but since they don't make their own they're probably fine. In fact, you might want to look at Samsung laptops to... they're exactly the same as the Dells and may cost less.

See the laptop in my sig (Satellite 1115-S103)

I've had it since thanksgiving. It hasn't given me the slightest bit of trouble. Last week I even managed to dual boot RedHat 8.0 & Win2K after a few hours of playing around.

I do have to agree that Toshiba's install of WinXP Home wasn't so great. Most games would lock up due to the poor quality drivers supplied. I have read that WinXP Pro doesnt have this problem.