Customer Reviews
Great Notebook 
2007-06-19
This is a great notebook! I picked mine up in the beginning of 2007. It has a huge 200gb hard drive, albeit a slow one. The screen looks sharp and everything works fine. It will play Half Life 2, Counter Strike 2 source, DOD source, and World of Warcraft just fine with all the goodies turned on. The only things I don't like about the computer is all the toshiba applications that came loaded and the small size on some of the keys. I wish it had a full size keyboard and no numberpad. After I uninstalled most everything that Toshiba put on and did a few more tweaks like changing the prefetch settings it boots and runs really fast. There is another review from someone else saying they had nothing but problems... Either that person has no idea about computers or they happened to get a bad one. Don't let that review change your mind about this computer! This is priced under others like dell and alienware and they are pretty much the same thing. There are only like 4 places in Asia that make laptops and the namebrand computer makers buy them and repackage them with their own markups. For the money it is a great product!
Very Good Computer 2007-05-09
I'm not sure why this was only rated 1-Star, but this is a very good computer. I do have to agree that the small right-side shift key can be annoying. That is about the only bad thing about the computer. The screen is ample size, it has a large HDD for a laptop. When playing graphic intensive games or video encoding it can become quite hot. So I recommend a cooler with this one. I have a desktop computer with two Nvidia 6600GT's in SLI and this computer can perform as good or slightly better than the desktop.
It is not small, so I dont' suggest it if you will be lugging it around a lot. I use it a lot for programming too. That why I love the keyboard with number pad combination. I have never had a problem with it locking up or the fingerprint reader not working. It has four USB 2.0 ports on it that are placed far enough apart to accomadate larger USB Drives simultaneously. Do not expect a long battery life when playing games. It will probably only last 45 minutes. It will last long enough to watch a full length movie. I have had this computer for 8 months now. I would definately recommend this to any gamer or business man alike. It get's the job done!
My Baby 2007-01-26
This is an awesome rig. It has plenty of power and loves to play games. I love the Nvidia see through windows. Fingerprint reader and hard drive space make it a no brainer. I can't wait for my vista upgrade! Toshiba is a great company in respect to reliable laptops.
Absolutely Terrible Product 
2006-11-06
I could not be more displeased with this laptop.
The form factor of the keyboard is terrible. I could not tell this from the information on the web. The right hand shift key is the size of a standard key, instead of the double size like most laptops, so trying to hit it fast while typing sometimes results in hitting the "UP ARROW" key during typing, which then slows things down quite a bit to fix it. The "PERIOD" and "QUESTION MARK" key is HALF THE SIZE of the standard keys which means you can easily miss them and have to fumble to fix the situation. Why Toshiba would make such critical keys so small is unimaginable to me. They have a full size numberic keypad that will likely never be used, while keys like the return and period that will be used constantly they have made impractical.
Several things were wrong with the computer right out of the box. One of the first things I did was look at some pictures. The application locked up after viewing maybe 5 pictures. What I have since found is that all the computer applications lock up at some point during use and you have to either wait maybe 2 to 3 minutes for them to unfreeze, or you can open another window of the same application and then the first one unfreezes. It's very strange and happens across the board.
The next thing that happened is the fingerprint reader stopped working. After I downloaded updates it started working again, but only functions properly about 50% of the time, and the rest of the time I need to use my password, so I can never count on it.
The next thing is that the touch pad functions irregularly. Sometimes it will close the application I am working on, other times it won't scoll and almost never does it work properly for volume control. It's very problematic.
Lately the computer has crashed with a blue screen several time for seemingly no reason. Not during intense activity, or network access.
Also every time it is booted up I get an error message about the DVD/CD player. It wants me to switch to DVD, despite the fact that I use the CD player much more. I have to tell it every time not to switch. It's very annoying.
Oh, and the master volume control is a cheap plasic rotatable knob on the front, much like they use to put on 1950's radios! What were they thinking!?
There are more problems, but I don't feel like typing them all, but those alone should be enough for you to stay away from this computer. It is so bad that I don't use it much, I am still using my 5 year old laptop with a screen that has to be tilted just right to work. I wish I could just get rid of it, but that isn't possible. I wish I had bought another Gateway, or anything else for that matter.
I have owned this for about 3 or 4 months now, and I just don't think I will ever be happy with it. I know on paper it looks like good performance for the money, but believe me, it isn't! Do yourself a favor and look at anything else!
