Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop Reviews

Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Reviews

Excellent Performance and Features for the money, July 5, 2007

By P. Pimental "philbert" (Michigan, USA) -
Note: Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop is a copy of the same review I posted on the Toshiba site.
Intelligent Design - all ports on the side, instead of in the back, keyboard large enough to permit normal typing speeds.
Excellent performance and features for the price and in comparison to competitor brands.
Excellent quality and solid feel in the construction of the laptop.
Excellent expandability. 4GB RAM max, 64 bit processor which may allow the laptop to upgraded to a 64bit OS in future, Vista or Linux (drivers, BIOS permitting) 200GB drive size.
Not an inordinate amount of shovelware.
Battery life at just over 2 hours, now that I "trained" it. A nine cell would have been nice, therefore only a 4 rating for battery life.
Wireless chipset, Sound and Video subsystems seem excellent.
Very quiet drive compared to A135-S4527. However Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop is slower than the 5400rpm drive in the S4527, which dropped performance rating to 4. I wish it had been partitioned into a c: and D: partition so that I could keep data on the d: partition and not have to backup offsite to restore the OS.
Sufficient RAM. I wish they had provided a single 1GB SO-DIMM rather than two 512MB's. I had to pull both out to upgrade to the recommended 2GB. The video will pull anywhere from 128MB to 384 so Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 upgrade is even more necessary than on systems using Intel's Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950.
I bought and returned a Acer Aspire 3680-2633 ( BIOS Issues) and a Tobshiba S135-4527 (32 bit processor and 2GB RAM limitation) before settling on this unit. No regrets on this one.

If your cursor jumps unexpectedly when typing, read on., September 29, 2007

By Luis C. C "Good things geek" (Costa Rica) -
I'll review the Toshiba A215-4697.
BASICS: 160 HDD, 1Gb Ram. ATI Radeon 120 up to 300+ Mb of video Ram (shared) and lots of other stuff.

To make it short: I love this computer. It works fine. Does what it's supposed to do, and, since it's not a Mac, it requires you to set it up before Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop will be the way you like it. After that, it's done and it works.

The wireless conection works fine for me and the S-Video video output allows me to extend my desktop into my TV so I can easily play a DVD for my girlfriend while I browse the Internet without any lag.

The CD-DVD writer has worked flawlesly.

The bad thing: UNWANTED SOFTWARE!!! This is my first branded computer and I don't know if it happens in every brand of computer. Lots of unnecesary software comes bundled with the computer. It takes about 1 hour to get rid of it all. After that, I installed my favorite aplications.

IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are 2 issues people have been complainig for:

1st: Computer screen going blank. I don't have that problem (hope it stays like this).

2nd: You are tiping and the cursor jumps into another line and your text goes all screwed up.
Solution 2: To solve the crazy-cursor when typing, you have to reduce your Touchpad sensibility. Go to Control Panel (in classic view). Then open Mouse-> ADVANCED tab -> click ADVANCED FEATURE SETTINGS -> 'Pointer speed and tapping settings'. Look for the 'Tapping settings' button and click it. You-ll see 'Operations during key input' enable it and this will disable the touck pad tapping function while typing. Worked for me!!!! No more crazy cursor.

You may also like to look for the 'Pointer speed and tapping settings' button. Slide the sensibility arrow all the way to the left. But that is not necesary to stop the crazy jumping cursor.

Did I made it short? NO? Sorry... love to have people reading. :-)

Very Satisfied, August 2, 2007

By Samuel M. Stone "ninghaoma" (Paramus, NJ United States) -
I am a happy user of Thinkpad T series, but now with Lenovo taking over, I decided to buy a Toshiba, due to years of Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop is great reputation, for my wife as she needed to replace her current laptop. After putting the product into my shopping list, I saw the local Circuit City offering $150 off, so I bought it there. (I just want to comment that I wonder how long Circuit City would last with the sales kids knowing little about the products they are selling but pretend to know a lot, and when you refused to buy additional warranty their face just turned unfriendly. Then it took them 20 minutes to find the key to open the closet to give me the box. Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop was the same attitude at the local CompUSA and I made a similar observation a couple of years ago, and now they are closed.)

At Circuit City, I saw an Acer Aspire with the same configuration as this Toshiba (except 160 GB hard drive) selling for $600. With unsatisfied experience with Acer Aspire, I bought the Toshiba with a little bit of hesitance due to a significant price difference of $250.

But Toshiba is Toshiba. My 9 year old daughter looked at it and said Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 was like a big DS (Nintendo). The look and feel is just like a piece of fine chocolate that you want to eat. The keyboard and touchpad are laid out in a perfect size, quality, and sensitivity. I am a trackpoint user and no touchpad has ever impressed me like this one.

The power of AMD Turion 64, with 2GB of ram just eliminated my ritual of having to buy additional memory right after buying a notebook. My wife still has her Acer Aspire with her and trying it next to each other, we just know Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 is worth $250 extra for happiness. Even without that comparison, this Toshiba is still a great deal for $850. You can't buy a better notebook. HP is selling a similar one around this range, but again, I didn't have a good experience with HP either.

One minor weakness is that you can't turn your screen all the way down to 180 degree, like my Thinkpad can. There are some occasions that I need to lay my computer nearly flat on a lectern to speak looking at it. If you don't need to use it that way, and few people do, this is not a problem.

I don't know about the support of Toshiba. The reason I like Thinkpad is IBM's service. I had a problem with my Thinkpad the other day, I called in and the next day there was a box at my door. I put the computer in, they picked it up, and I receive the computer back the next evening, with a new motherboard. I wonder if Toshiba can beat that. If they can, I am switching over.

Buy Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697

Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 Laptop