Toshiba - Satellite Laptop / Intel® Core™ i3 Processor / 16" Display / 4GB Memory / 500GB Hard Drive - Slate

I must first say that I'm pretty picky when it comes to technology. However, I didn't want to spend the money on a system that would completely knock my socks off. We have another Toshiba laptop that we love and I used to sell computer hardware and have sold thousands of Toshibas, so they were always in the running when we decided to purchase a second laptop. I'm just going to run down the line of things that I like about it and things that I'm not crazy about. Likes - Love the display. It's amazing how much they've improved in the 1.5 yrs since we purchased our last Satellite. Like the keyboard -- number keys on the side are a hit and I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the "chicklet" keys, but I've gotten used to them quickly and like them too. Love the battery life - That was the main reason I was looking at Toshiba over Dell. I have a Dell laptop for work and the battery is almost non-existent. I am guessing it's a 6 cell, if even that. Our first Toshiba has a 9 and it last forever and a day. The fact that this laptop had a 12 cell was almost a deterrent, because I wasn't sure of the weight and bulkiness that would be added to the system. It does stick out, but is not horrible and the weight isn't unbearable either. It's definitely worth the small negatives to get the 12 cell battery life. Like the built in system restore.... I have already done the system restore (to try to fix the 1 thing I am not happy about with the computer). It didn't fix my computer, but did do an awesome job at bringing everything back to the minute I took it out of the box. Windows7 - still learning all that it can do and I like it. Dislikes - #1 dislike (and I'm interested in any answers that can be provided if there's a fix). Every time I plug a mouse into it, or run Skype (not sure what else would trigger this), we get this awful feedback-like, high pitch annoying sounds that sound like they're coming from the left side of the system (around the speaker). I tried to uninstall and reinstall drivers, I've tried different mice and I've tried to mute the sounds, mute the microphone, all kinds of things (even system restore) and it still comes back. I tried to call Toshiba and they had nothing to offer except to reinstall the drivers and do a system restore. This isn't an awfully loud sound, but seems louder b/c I am on the computer in the evenings after my daughter and husband go to bed. I'm really picky, but it's just annoying that it's there. Sound - This is my second laptop (same model) because the first one had a blown speaker out of the box. Best Buy was great and exchanged with no problems. I still feel like this isn't very loud and web sounds aren't the greatest (could be b/c it's web). Listening to the CD player is pretty good though. I feel like the speakers on my older Toshiba were better. Maybe I'm being too picky. The other thing I liked better about my A305 (2 year old Toshiba) was the volume knob on the front of the laptop by the card reader. This virtual volume control is a bit annoying and I find myself just going to the taskbar to control the volume. That's nothing major, just making a point of something we liked better on the old one. Overall - for the money, it's a good system. If I could find out a way to get rid of that annoying feedback/screeching sound, I'd definitely give it 5 out of 5 stars.

This Toshiba replaces a Toshiba. I have been quite pleased with this brand (more so than Dell, for instance). I am VERY happy with the speed of this machine. The processor is 2.4 Mhz, with 4GB memory - it really loads everything VERY fast! The video is exceptionally clear and crisp. The visuals from games envelopes your senses, while the videos and movies are as good as the best HDTVs. Out of the box, it is already set for pretty good performance. I installed Iolo System Mechanic v10 to fine tune the settings, which really boosted the speed to its full potential (WOW!). I also got rid of the Symantec/Norton anti virus product. You can get much better AV performance for free with Microsoft Security Essentials. MSE caught viruses and Trojans when NAV missed them! I also use Webroot products to further protect the machine from viruses and tracking malware. If you are upgrading from XP, this machine comes with MS Windows 7. It is not mentioned anywhere that Outlook Express is not functional with Windows 7! Microsoft does have free downloads to replace OE, so you don't necessarily have to buy Office. The new email app comes in a package of free multi-functional apps from Microsoft, and I am not up on what all functions it covers, but it looks interesting. Of course, the machine comes pre-loaded with trial versions of Office Suite, so you can purchase the Suite as you prefer. I was pleasantly surprised that so far, all of my peripherals are compatible with Windows 7, including my HP Photosmart printer, USB2 hub, HP3 player, external hard drive, external DVD burner, wireless mouse, and my digital video/still photo hardware. This exceeds my expectations! The only hassle I'm having is the transfer of only selected bookmarks and files from the old computer. It has Widows XP, and I'm fairly certain I will not be able to connect the two and drag and drop the elements I want to transfer. Manually entering these elements is tedious and time consuming. A VERY small price to pay for the platform I now have. The only down side to this machine is the sound system - the speakers to be specific. They are Harmon-Kardon speakers, which is a top brand in sound. But really, what do you expect to get out of a speaker that has a cone that's less than 2 inches in diameter? The bass is lacking, and the mid range is rather washed out. The treble range is sharp as you would expect with a small speaker. The equalizer app that comes pre-loaded is excellent for using external speakers. Tweaking the equalizer using the pre-programmed choices is an easy way to go, or you can specify a satisfactory number of frequency ranges to provide a full sound to the external speakers. I may not have found it yet, but there must be a way to turn off the internal speakers when there are external speakers plugged in. The OS recognizes when externals are plugged in, but in operation, BOTH the internal and external speakers remain on, as if to present true surround-sound. My preferences would be to have an option of turning off the internal speakers while using the external speakers. THAT'S the only draw-back I have found so far. The price has been fluctuating $50 over the last month before Christmas. When it dropped to $599.99, I bought it. Going to other sites online, you won't find a machine with similar features for less. The processor speed is 2.4 MHz...it comes with a 12 cell battery...it comes with 4GB memory...and a 16" diagonal screen. I could not find any other machine with this combination of features at a better price. Finally, the free trial of Geek Squad came in handy when I had the question about Outlook Express. I'm quite familiar with computers, having built a few desk tops, but the ease of online chat with someone from Geek Squad helped me so I didn't have to research Outlook Express and the replacement app. He did the leg work for me and provided a hot link to Microsoft for me to do the free download of the whole app. So get the machine! Take the free trial of Geek Squad. Forget the pre-loaded Symantec AV and take the free Microsoft Security Essentials. Eventually, I will also get the new Office Suite, in spite of the degraded nature of the apps. I use the new Office at work and find it VERY unstable and clunky, compared to Office 2003. This looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

I bought this to replace my old Gateway from 2007. The Toshiba Satellite with its Intel 3 processor is four times faster and much more comfortable to use. It is a little heavier, but I think the extra ounce or two are well worth the sturdiness of this machine. It feels solid and I'm not afraid to take it on the road with me. I love the 16-inch display -- bigger than I'm accustomed to, but not the monster size of a 17-incher. I'm using it to replace my old laptop, but also hook it up to my 24-inch monitor and ergo keyboard at home, which takes just seconds, when I have a long project to work on. So it is replacing my old Dell desktop, too. The Toshiba Satellite keyboard is extremely responsive and comfortable. The textured finish means it never looks smudgy. This model has a full 10-key number pad on the right, which is convenient if you do a lot of number entry; with any of the free online calculators, the number pad takes the place of a calculator on my desktop. The laptop is able to pick up wifi signals almost everywhere. It doesn't come with a real Office program, but does have a limited version of Office 10 that's not a trial -- it's yours to keep. For homework, surfing, and basic word processing, the free Office 10 is sufficient.

YOU MUST READ THIS. For the 600 dollar laptop category, this is the best laptop. Sorry in advance if this is a lengthy review, but I am so impressed with this laptop, it is driving me crazy not to post this. Let me start with this: My first time booting it up, when it got to the desktop, it was a clear space with only one or 2 icons on the desktop. Except for the single Best Buy application (which I deleted/uninstalled effortlessly), we are talking ZERO BLOATWARE, zip, zilch, nada. No unwanted services, programs, games, or anything, absolutely nothing whatsoever at all. This is the first computer, whether it be a desktop or a laptop, that I have experienced this with. As such, it appears the manufacturer installed Windows 7 home premium 64-bit onto their machine, and then said to themselves, "you know what, lets give the customers a break and not install any bloatware, and just leave it be with a clean Windows install, and thats it!" Except for the Best Buy application...but that is very easy to quickly remove, if you want to. This just blows my mind. Pretty much every laptop on the market now is so overloaded with unwanted content which takes hours or even days to uninstall, once you get your new computer up and running. My neighbor next door just bought a laptop with the same exact core i3 processor, and 4gb of ram. It still has the plastic wrap on the screen, he has not taken it off yet. When clicking on internet explorer, he has to wait about 15 seconds before internet explorer finally opens a screen and starts to load a webpage. It is because one half of his desktop is cluttered with bloatware that is pre-installed on the computer. His computer is so slow, it makes Windows 95 look like technology of the future. My neighbor can't even log in to his router because some of the bloatware is conflicting with his wireless connection and not allowing him to connect to the ip address of his router. I walked into my house and typed in his router's ip address and immediately was able to log into his router. Folks, you have no idea how awesome it is that this Toshiba has zero bloatware. You can boot it up and immediately create backup disks, because it is a clean install, and there is no bloatware to uninstall. Compared to my neighbors new laptop, my new Toshiba is like night and day. It is just so fast. If the computer is turned off completely, it takes only perhaps 30 seconds or less from pressing the power button to when the desktop loads. It is so fast, that when you click internet explorer, it immediately pops right up and loads, no hesitation at all. Graphics: for being an integrated graphics processor and having shared memory, its not too bad. I have not hooked up my tv yet, but I am running Flight Simulator 9 on high, to ultra high settings and setting it to 25 frames per second, and it is performing effortlessly, no problem at all, smooth as butter. The computer does not run hot. You can feel hot air coming ouf of the left side vent, but the overall computer is not hot, not even warm to the touch. The fan seems to run on minimal most of the time, and then while watching 720p video, the fan goes up a notch, but still seems like its only spinning at like 10 percent, barely noticeable, and barely producing any heat. Heat is a laptop killer, it kills the battery, it kills the processor, makes a computer slow, and I can say that after using this Toshiba now for a couple weeks, it is made well, and does not heat up. Even with it sitting on your lap for 3 hours, it is slightly warm, barely. The battery sticks down as it is a 12 cell battery. I find that with the screen at about 75 percent, and the cpu scaled down to 90 percent or so, I am getting about 3.5 - 4 hours out of the battery. Now if it is in "eco" mode, I'm sure that the battery life will soar to like 6 hours or something, but I don't use eco mode because the screen is pretty dark and the cpu gets scaled way back. By the way, eco mode can be adjusted, and turned on and off with one touch of the green lighted eco button. Sittin on your lap, you have to have your legs open slightly to allow the battery to sit between your legs. Its not a problem at all for me. I don't use this to be ultra portable, just to unplug and use in the family room for awhile, while watching tv. Or to take on a trip, if need be. The keyboard is the new design where all the keys are separated. It would be nice if the keys had a little bit more texture to the surface of them, because they are smoothed over. Also, when typing, the keyboard does seem to feel a bit hollow, like there is nothing underneath the keyboard...but hey, its not a 2000 dollar laptop with an alumninum frame, so for a 600 dollar laptop, this seems pretty "of the norm." The screen is pretty good, although the colors just don't seem natural...pink is more purple, and so on. I guess I am not use to the led backlit lcd yet. I have a plasma screen tv, and the colors appear to be very natural and real...led screen on this Toshiba seems to be kinda fake colors... very bright screen, and a good screen, but the colors just dont seem to be natural looking. Also, the touchpad is terrible, almost unuseable. The touchpad needs to be redesigned completely. You are moving your finger and all the sudden you start resizing the screen and zooming in and all sorts of crazy stuff. I dont really care though because I am using a mouse a majority of the time. Also, this Toshiba has push to tv technology to wirelessly transmit video to your tv, but you have to buy a 100 dollar unit in addition to the laptiop. This Toshiba has a 7500 rpm hard drive, vs 5400 rpm on most, which means when you go to open a program, file, music, video, whatever that is stored on the hard drive, it takes less time to access and get that file up and running because the hard drive spins faster. Conversely, that also uses up more power than a slower hard drive. All in all, I love this laptop, and it is the best laptop I have ever used, ever. For what I need it for, it is 98.5 percent perfect, with the 1.5 percent being the touchpad. Do not make the touchpad be your decision for buying or not buying this laptop. The bloatware is the single most important thing. I love this laptop, and although as I am a technology nut, and wish I could have a laptop with a dedicated video card, 8gb of ram, a 15000 rpm hard drive, and every bell and whistle known, that is just not in our budget. But for 600 bucks, ( now it is 629 for some reason) this is the best laptop for this price. Get this, you will not regret it, if what you need is a laptop for more of a home computer, with a portable aspect to it. It's not a lightweight ultraportable, but it is a darn good laptop.

i did a lot of research before I bought this laptop last month. The things that were important to me were 1) long battery life 2) large screen 3)fast. Yes, the battery doesn't last 8 hrs but 4-6 is a lot better than 2-3 hrs. I wanted a large screen 15 or 16" so it still fits in my laptop bag but still looks good when watching DVD's. It has a very good set of speakers for watching DVD's. I love the fact that I can plug my IPOD into the laptop and listen to music from the laptop speakers without having to turn on the laptop. The weight is no big deal. I went with the I3 processor since Powerpoint runs the same where its I3, I5 or I7 and the faster processor means more money and less battery life. The dvd slide out is near power cord but how often do you change dvd's. The only issue I had was the WiMax was overriding the built in internet and they changed the settings for me at Geek Squad. I could care less how poor the web cam looked since I don't use it. For business use and traveling, this is the best. This is my first review of anything and I appreciate all the past reviews best buy posts and I hope this helps you if you need a computer to take on the road with you for business and some pleasure. This week they dropped the price from $699 to $649 so I got $50 back too.

This was a warranty replacement for my last HP Pavilion laptop. I was a little cautious getting something so new, but I am so thankful I did! The speakers are definitely the best feature. They have amazing sound and get rather loud for a laptop. I was also surprised by the battery life. It says up to about 8 hours. I don't think it quite makes it that long, but I love being able to watch a full DVD and still be able to surf the web and listen to music in one charge. The screen is very clear however when the brightness is up all the way the colors seem just a little washed out. The feature I don't like the most would be that the touch pad is off set due to the numerical keyboard on the side. It is a little awkward when you have it in your lap. The touch pad also has a multi-touch feature that lets you zoom in and out with two fingers. I find myself doing it on accident a lot, which is annoying but I will get used to it. The processor is very fast and I haven't been able to make it lag at all yet. The wireless card built in can handle N speeds also which makes wireless surfing much faster and increases the range considerably. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants a fast laptop that looks great but doesn't want to spend a life savings. The regular 3 year extended warranty is also a must have. Something is bound to go wrong within 3 years and if not, you have a free battery replacement with the plan which will recover about 150-200 of the cost!

This is my second Toshiba after years of Dell, then HP and I must say I have been more than satisfied. My first was a Protege R705 which was for travel and is one of the few lightweight 13" machines that sports an optical drive AND is really weight-competitve with netbooks and minis. But my wife needed a new computer to replace an old hp with vista. First the size of the A665 is perfect. The 16" screen is beautiful, but the machine is light enough to travel with and certainly move around the house with. AND, big plus: full numeric pad - my wife handles the finances and is lost without a number pad! We're not gamers so for Office apps, photos (including editing with photoshop elements), internet, video, and all the rest, etc, the i3 and 4gb ram is lightening quick.. To top it off, the 500gb hard drive is nice and roomy. Really a nice package. (Oh yeah, and they include the 12 cell battery for the price). The buying experience at best buy was pretty good, Got $30 back today as they lowered the price after I had the machine about 10 days - no hassles whatsoever. I found out checking the internet and it would have been a really nice customer service touch if they actually notified you by email of price changes during the price guarantee period, but you need to do the checking. I haven't done this before, but I spent the extra 40-50$ on a "set up" done by the Geek Squad, and I have to say, there was no bloat ware (they remove it), the Kaspersky antivirus was included x 6 mo. and installed, and the darn thing is performing great. So maybe it's worth it. I did find that the Toshiba extended warranty seems to be a better deal than that offerd by bestbuy but I knkow I'll have to send it to them rather than take it to a local bestbuy. Anyway, I give this machine an unqualified thumbs up. I'm becoming a Toshiba cheerleader - and I think best buy is doing ok in the sales/service area.

... and I've had them all. But here's the issue: Within a few months, I received an alert to shut down my computer because of overheating. A diagnosis disclosed the fan quit working. Toshiba dutifully sent a box for warranty work... and they've had it a month. This week they said they had a problem finding the right fan. Huh? This is Toshiba, and a popular computer. And can they expedite it? Nope, not until 30-days have passed. For a fan? Se beware. I think it is a great computer for the price. But consider getting a Best Buy warranty/extended warranty, or spend the extra bucks for a Dell or Sony. Toshiba customer service sucks....