Customer Reviews
solid, fast, cheap, stylish 
2008-01-29
I purchased the s4747 a couple months ago for <$600. I have found this laptop to be pretty amazing. I am able to run games such as Oblivion, ,GTA:SA, Battlefield 2, and World in Conflict. As well as watch 1080p content on my DLP via the vga out. The quality is amazing and smooth. I didn't have any problems with the screen going out but did have a problem with the SD drive not recognizing re-inserted cards which was vista related. Everything booted and connected perfectly out of the box.
The 200gb harddrive is nice although at 4200rpms its a little slow, but for the price, the size makes up for it and if you really need a faster harddrive buy one, they are cheap, it also supports solid state drives so I am just going to wait until those are affordable, so it's fairly future proof in the ram/hard drive department. Also, I bought some more ram. While 1gb is enough to run smoothly most of the time, sometimes it filled up to 80% when running multiple applications. 1 gb of readyboost helped out a little bit.
The s4747 is capable of running 4gb of ram(which is pretty amazing) and you can find 4gb online for $80. Oh yeah, the 1.8ghz turion 64x2 cooks, the built end web cam/microphone is nice and has pretty good quality, speakers are adequate not horrible, but leave more to be desired. S-video out is good for watching movies on older tv's, vga out looks amazing.
The design is very low profile, I am able to pick it up with 1 hand fairly easy from any position. I have dropped it twice, still works although I smashed a usb flash drive in the process. I also dropped a remote control on the screen which left a very small light spot for about a week before disappearing. When on my lap both fan locations are almost always open. Having a volume wheel in front is really nice, as well as the headphone, mic, wifi switch, and memory card reader in front. Over all the design is perfect. The glossy finish does fingerprint and smudge easy but just as easy, a damp cloth returns it back to brand new with minimal effort.
The ONLY thing that I don't like about this laptop is the battery life. It is really bad. I have it plugged in 95% of the time and haven't needed a time where I needed more than the hour or so it gives you on high performance, on low setting you might be able to squeeze out 2 hours. But it might be wise to buy a better/extra battery/different computer if you plan on using it without the plug a lot. Oh yeah, built in bluetooth would of been cool, but you can get dongles for a few dollars.
Great laptop, except for black screen of death 2008-01-13
I really enjoy using this laptop, everything was as expected. lots of people complain about the mouse cursor jumping around when typing, here's how to fix that: when you type, to disable the touch pad, press the FN button (located on your keyboard, next to the CTRL button), hold and press the F9 button, located on top of the row of number button. Doing so will disable the touchpad. to enable it again, simply hold FN and F9.
about black screen of death: i don't know how to fix that. Does any know how to do that? i would really appreciate it if you can email me and help me out, it really annoy me. my email is: madison010101@yahoo.com. thank you and god bless all those who help.
Good Prodyuct, service 
2007-12-28
The computer was as advertised and received timely. As an aside, not only were the Amazon prices good prices but there was no sales tax on the transaction. A real good deal.
Happy 2007-12-11
I am very happy with this machine. I had some issues at first with the SD slot and the back screen (caused after the machine "slept"). Once I fixed these I am very happy.
To fix: installed new BIOS version (from Toshiba website) and resinstalled a Vista "hot fix" for the SD drive.
If you also allow the machine to sleep you want to set the controls that wake it. For example I added a regular mouse and if the machine was closed a movement of the mouse caused it to partially wake (leaving the blank screen). I set the mouse driver to not wake the machine - problem gone away. The machine awakens now on opening the case or a keyboard click. Working great.
Nice Laptop 2007-12-06
Absolutely nothing wrong with this laptop except the ebony finish, which tends to show fingerprints. Others have mentioned blackouts, slowness and Vista as problems. I've had no blackouts at all. Sleep mode, hibernate, switching between three users, fingerprint scans, everything runs as it should.
I did remove all the bloatware, including the Office trial, Mcafee trial, Google desktop and toolbars and Pisca. I then installed the free Avast for my virus scanner software (much less resource hog than Mcafee). The only the I left were the Toshiba utilities and games. I went into the registry and removed all sorts of startup apps which were useless to me. After this, I gained quite a bit of performance.
Here is what I removed from the registry
From HKEY_Current_User_Software_Windows_CurrentVersion_Run, I removed
TOSCDSPD.exe
Windows Welcome (forgot the file name)
From HKEY_Local_Machine_Software_Windows_CurrentVersion_Run, I removed
TCrdMain.exe
traybar.exe"
HSON.exe
KeNotify.exe
NDSTray.exe
SmoothView.exe
CLIStart.exe
SynTPStart.exe
Everything runs just fine without these components. Do this at your own risk. If you are not familiar with the registry, you can utilize Windows Defender to disable these apps from running.
*** UPDATE ***
I finally got the blank screen of death. See below for a message I posted in a forum.
I think I fixed "blank screen of death" issue on my A215-S4767. The only time I could make this problem happen was while playing a Yahoo Radio Station with Internet Explorer 7. It never happened with Firefox.
Anyhow, I downloaded the latest BIOS, 1.80 and installed from Vista. I can't make the blank screen appear now. I do notice that the fan tends to run more than it did.
BIOS: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modSel.jsp
The BIOS may say for A210, but it is also for the A215 models. I'm hoping this is a permanent fix.
Toshiba became better 2008-06-02
I've been using various companies' laptops to test.
A215-S4757's only flaw is that it doesn't have a bluetooth built-in. You can have an add-on, which is not a big deal.
The HD is abundant - 250GB. Though the screen is big, it is light compared to others.
I understand some people's coomplaints about the mouse-pad that makes typing fast annoying and time consuming because the mouse-pad is too sensitive and often knocks off what you have been working on.
(TIP: Uninstall he current driver and install "ALPS" mouse pointer software instead of "Synaptics."
I don't believe it 
2008-03-19
I recently bought this computer, the first time that I turn on the computer everything seems to be working just fine. The second time the computer put itself a BIOS password and now I cannot access my laptop, I researched about this and apparently this is a well know Toshiba issue and they don't do anything about it. I call costumer service and they told me that I should take my computer to the support company in my country and wait for their solution.
THIS IS THE FIRST AND LAST TIME I BOUGHT A TOSHIBA. DELL is much better concerning new computers and costumer support.
Great Laptob at a great price. 2008-03-13
I own this laptop myself and it is very impressive I have owned dell and hp laptops before and I got to hand it to toshiba, my satelite is superior to hp and dell. About the black screen of death that is very easily fixed just go to control panel and got to power settings then go to advance settings and adjust you cpu proccessor output to 100% and the black screen of death will permenatly fixed. I also recommend getting 2 gig of ram with it. Out of all the laptops I have owned the toshiba a215 s4747 has been the best especially at the price I have payed for it, not to mention that it has a built in webcam and mic, the keyboard is silver so it is easy to see in the dark with the glow of the screen. It has a wonderful dolby sound card so you can listen to your music in crystal clear audio. It can also label flash you cds and dvds so you can customize your memories. The only draw back is the battery life but you can always upgrade to a extended battery at the cost of the laptop you should be able to afford it. It also has a ATI Radeon graphics card for you gamers. It easily gets 5 stars, if you notice most negative reviews are dued to the black screen of death which can easily be remedied.
3 New Toshiba..... 2008-02-21
I have exchanged the Toshiba three times for a new Toshiba A215 each time due to the fact that at least daily on each one I have had the black screen of death occurs!!! I am extremely disappointed due to in the past Toshiba have had great inexpensive laptops. I am taking this worthless laptop back to Best Buy to find something else. Please don't buy this laptop as I have been through 3 in less than two weeks with the same reoccuring problem.
computer 2008-02-15
i never recieved the product and i am currently requesting an answer as to why. ive ordered several things from you this past year and had no problems till now.
