I have had this laptop for almost a year and I am modifying my review because both of the USB 3.0 ports have stopped working. One is physically broken. The other one just stopped working. I'm not sure what is wrong with it because Windows shows the USBs as all working correctly. Driver and BIOS updates have done nothing. Unfortunately, the ports are soldered to the motherboard and I'm much too risk averse to attempt a repair. I'm now down to 1 USB 2.0 port. In all my years of using PCs, I have never had USB problems like this.
To make matters worse, Toshiba doesn't supply the motherboard schematics. I have experience fixing laptops, so when these issues started I called them to see if they had any technical manual available so that I could see how the USB ports are connected to the motherboard (if it was connected via a USB board I could have repaired it myself). I was told they don't provide that information and I would have to contact a local service provider. None of the ones I contacted knew what I was talking about. The only reason that I learned that the USB ports are soldered to the motherboard is because someone is selling an S875 motherboard on Ebay and included pictures with their auction.
======
I have had this unit for 6 months and so far it has been great. I work from home and this laptop is able to handle lots of memory intensive jobs with ease. I have no complaints about performance. I do a lot of work where I need to have multiple screens open and this laptop is great for that. Battery life is good, I get over 3.5 hours, doing basic web surfing. Since I use this primarily at home, I typically don't use it on battery power.
I got this computer because it had a lot of features compared to similarly priced units, including a Blu-Ray drive. Be aware that for BD-J titles, the mouse doesn't work. I learned this the hard way when I purchased "The Avengers" on Blu-Ray and I couldn't figure out how to make it play. (Just use the arrow and Enter keys). This model had a lot of RAM and hard drive space compared to other models that I looked at.
The laptop is wide and because the power cord plugs into the left side, it add a couple more inches of width to the unit. I do wish the power cord plugged into the back. Another quibble is that the card reader is located on the front right side of the laptop, which would not be a problem except for the fact that cards do not go flush inside the reader. Once inserted, they stick out about a half of an inch. A couple of times, while wearing long sleeved shirts, my sleeves have caught on the card. There are admittedly minor issues, but my actual rating would have been a 4.5 if that was an option.
No comments:
Post a Comment