List Price: $824.99
Sale Price: $664.95
Today's Bonus: 19% Off
Nice general-purpose laptop. Great for using around the house, office, dorm, and the occasional road trip no bulky additional accessories needed.
The keyboard great feel, love it even fat fingers can't miss the mark. Keys are readable, even in low light. The keyboard is not backlit a fact, not a flaw. The primary purpose of the function keys (a space-hogging holdover from pre-Windows days) is as buttons for help, brightness, media controls, touchpad on/off, volume, wireless mode, and even switching between multiple monitors no SHIFT, CTRL, or ALT required. Now, if they would only do that with the number pad, we non-accountants would get some practical use out of another large chunk of the keyboard. There is a caps-on light on the caps lock key, which is blocked by your hand if you are typing, but was omitted entirely on some other models I looked at. (If you are reading this, Toshiba person, move the light to the left corner of the caps lock key so it can be seen when hands are on the keyboard.)
The sound loud enough for a hearing-challenged person (me) to easily hear a few feet away. The built-in mic is loud and clear for phone calls.
The speed fast! As another reviewer noticed, the computer is faster than the DSL speed, so I try to be patient and not blame the machine my IP is throttling and it is just easier to notice now. To get all the speed and memory, Windows 8 64-bit is installed, which is the future but not backward compatible with older software, so expect to spend some time visiting software and vendor sites for updates and replacements.
The touchpad basic but easy to use. The manual says the touchpad will scroll, but mine doesn't. (Yes, I checked for updated drivers!) The touchpad is placed left of center, below the standard keyboard, so it falls between your hands when typing. This placement eliminates accidentally brushing the touchpad with thumb or wrist when typing a problem of previous laptop generations with a center-placement touchpad.
The CD/DVD-RW drive I'm just not ready to give that up. The little bit of extra laptop weight is less than having to carry an external drive (and looking dorky in public). A built-in drive also doesn't take up extra desk space or use a scarce USB port.
Screen resolution low. In fact, it's the minimum screen resolution required for the current functions of Windows 8. Text and pictures are certainly readable/viewable, but can be grainy. The viewing angle with text is flexible enough so that people looking over your shoulder can easily view it, but for pictures and movies, the view needs to be straight ahead. (You can, however, attach an external monitor if you really want those people looking over your shoulder to clearly see your vacation pictures.) What you probably won't be doing with this screen resolution is serious gaming or graphic design. To be fair, when shopping, I found low screen resolution on laptops across all brands and models at this price point and above, so low screen resolution seems to be a favorite manufacturer's compromise for mid-price laptops. I would sacrifice some of the abundant built-in storage, which I will never use, for a higher screen resolution, and add a star to my rating.
The webcam ok for occasional use, but you may want something better if you do a lot of online face time.
Battery lightweight, but not user replaceable, so it will be expensive to have replaced when it no longer holds a charge. Personally, I like the resulting lighter weight and am gambling that the battery will last until I need a different configuration and then use this laptop with the power cord as a backup at home or office. Full battery charge is enough to watch a couple of full-length movies or half a season of your favorite TV series, but for continuous all day use, you will need the power cord for a recharge. It does recharge fast, though. You can extend the battery-only usage by putting the laptop in sleep mode when you are distracted or away the laptop pops immediately out of sleep at the touch of the power button (my favorite feature). I tried the `battery power-saving' feature to extend the battery charge, but it made the screen so drab and dreary that it wasn't worth the resulting mental depression to gain a few extra minutes between charges. When attaching some external peripherals, the laptop is under-powered on battery power alone, so you will need the laptop power cord and/or separate device power when attaching some devices, including speakers. A mouse or flash drive is no problem, though.
Port placement Two USB, the mic, and the headphone ports are located toward the front of the right side, so anything with a cord is in the way of using a mouse or reading/writing materials for right-handers. The exhaust fan vent is on the right, too, which keeps the bottom of the machine cooler for true lap use, but also keeps the right side a few degrees warmer than the rest of the workspace and the mouse hand toasty. I still have many corded USB devices and use a mouse for most work, so the port and vent locations make this laptop inconvenient to use as a full-time desktop replacement. Lefties will find the port placement good for them. As a righty, I find so many nice features on this laptop that I will suffer the occasional cord tangle when necessary and start seriously looking for wireless replacements.
The most incomprehensible design feature is that the port labels are tiny etchings on the bottom of the laptop, so you must turn the laptop over and use a flashlight and magnifier to see them. Although I have been able to visually match a round peg to a round hole from an early age, I cannot identify which identical round hole is for the mic, which for the audio. There are three identical lights on the front of the laptop, which probably convey important information, but without visible icons, are useful only to help find the laptop in the dark. It also took me a couple of turns around the perimeter to find the SD card slot, hidden under the front beveled edge next to the lights. The audio ports, card slot, and lights are all below the metal portion of the keyboard, so there is no excuse for not etching the icon labels for these ports on the top so they will be visible/usable without manhandling the laptop. Toshiba did find space for several stickers you don't care about, but if you want port labels, you will have to make your own stickers. Ok, this paragraph was a rant thanks for listening.
The User's Guide well done, easy to follow, and very helpful getting started. Do skip directly to Chapter 1 (Getting Started) to bypass 28 pages of warnings, cautions, and responsibilities (yours, not Toshiba's) it's way too late to tell me that stuff after I've already bought the machine. As of this writing, Toshiba does not provide the User's Guide online for this model, which is standard practice for other brands and appliances. I saved a copy of the User's Guide to external storage, but think that should be Toshiba's responsibility, not mine.
Free cloud storage. I got free storage for 2 years on Dropbox through registering with Toshiba plus more free storage on Skydrive courtesy of Microsoft Windows 8. Free is nice.
In summary:
You will no longer need external speakers, a headset (unless you want privacy), a USB laptop cooler pad, external storage for your zillions of pictures, a portable CD/DVD player/burner, or a rolling laptop case.
You will need to update or replace old 16-bit software, consider replacing corded with wireless external devices, and find something to do with all the time this speedy machine saves you.
