Toshiba Satellite L450D-11V 15.6-Inch Laptop (AMD Athlon Ql-65 2.1GHz, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, DVDSMDL, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64 Bit)

 

 

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I bought this laptop for websurfing, watching online TV services like BBC IPlayer and the occational word processing kind of stuff.

First of all, this is not some sexy, super sleek laptop. It looks basic, it is basic but the build quality is good. The only button (apart from the keyboard) is the power button. There are no extra buttons for WIFI off/on, volume mute, or anything like that. I have to say, I like the keyboard. It has good tactile feedback although it is a little louder than my previous Asus laptop was. It is also a good size (the reason I don't like Netbooks is that the keyboards are just too small for my touchtyping style). Also, there is an analogue volume control on the front by the phone and mic sockets - brilliant, really like this, as it controls the main volumn.

Windows 7 is a bit Meh, in my opinion, it's just like Vista but actually works properly. My previous Asus only had 1GB memory and was soooo slow. I got fed-up and put Linux Minut on it. This laptop, with 7, is zippy and responsive but has 3GB of memory, so that could be why it is quicker.

Bad Stuff: It comes installed with a metric tonne of Toshiba cr@pware, as well as trial office and McAffee AntiVirus. Delete... Delete... Delette... Avast, Firefox, Freebird, VLC, all work really well and the cr@pware is gone, thank goodness.

In summary: A decent budget laptop, ditch the cr@pware and it is perfect for coach surfing the web etc...

I keep hearing that this is a budget machine, but so far only the price is in line with that tag. It has a dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor clocked at a respectable 2.1ghz, 3GB memory (upgradable to a whopping 8GB), it has HDMI out (which I never saw on some laptops costing double) and it has Radeon HD 3200 on board graphics with the full 256MB dedicated memory this chipset allows - which, while not making it a gaming spec machine by any stretch of the imagination, means it can play some very decent games that are not too old....which is fine for people who aren't massive PC gamers, or for people who are using it as a second PC, like I am.

It won't win a beauty contest, the silver and black scheme isn't the prettiest I've seen, but anyone who puts cosmetic concerns over practicality and price has more money than sense. It's a laptop...not a beauty queen. The build quality is top draw...one of the things Toshiba are known for. Asus and Toshiba recently come out the joint winners of an independent study of laptop failure rates over three years, with less than half of the failures of the worst offender....Hewlett Packard. That is one of the reasons I went with Toshiba, and I can see some substance to their claim of good build quality already. There is absolutely non of the flexing you get on a cheap Dell, for example. Drop this and it and it would probably survive. For a model in their budget line, that shows some class.

The 15.6" Trubrite screen is more than decent. Text looks excellent, and the colours, brightness and sharpness are what we've come to expect from the glossy type LCD's....but of course, the downer is the reflections you get in brightly lit environments. But what can you do? When I went shopping for this, every PC store I went in was filled with laptops with these newer glossy screens. It seems they're a sign of the times. A recent poll showed that a whopping two thirds of us prefer the matte type LCD's....even though they can't touch the brightness and colour levels of screens like this. But in a darkened room, playing a DVD, you'll see where screens like this come into their own. The L450D's screen doesn't have the best viewing angles, but I find this is a problem on many laptops...so I won't be singling it out for scorn on that point. It is a personal laptop, so it is for one user who can angle it to their preferred viewing angle, and when used like that it is perfectly fine.

For ports there are 3 USB ports, Ethernet, VGA and...best of the lot...HDMI. Not too many budget spec PC's have one of those. There's also a headphone port, a mic port, a volume wheel, a 4-in-1 card reader and holes for Kensington locks. Personally, that is all I'll ever need. I have a top spec desktop for everything else. This is just a very well specced out second PC for me to use upstairs....and it does that job very well indeed. The keyboard is also very nice....perfect resistance in the keys and I can touchtype without making mistakes. The installed webcam is just VGA quality, but I find it perfectly decent for messaging with family and friends.

The installed wifi card is one thing that has thoroughly impressed me. It is not only 802.11b/g/n capable, but where the wifi card in my old Dell only picks up my router with 'three bars' quality, this one picks it up at the full five bars and windows calls the connection 'Excellent'. It also picked up two more local wifi signals where the Dell only picked up my next door neighbour.

The battery is advertised as 2.5 hours....well I've been getting between 2hrs:10mins to 2hrs:30mins depending on what I'm doing. That is fine for me as this is a laptop that won't ever be too far from a mains. If you want a laptop for lumping around outside a lot, I'd suggest you go with a higher end unit that gives you 4 hours or more. If not, you can't go wrong with this.

Lastly, I just thought I'd mention the fact that of all the brands I looked at, Toshiba were the only one to supply you a 32bit Windows 7 Premium DVD in case you found you run into issues with the installed 64bit version. If you find that invaluable old programs or games won't work on the 64bit architecture, you can install this 32 bit version of Windows 7 Premium instead. Of course, you'd lose the use of the 64bit recovery partition and all installed software, so Toshiba provide an application to back the partition up first, so you can return to the 64bit factory state should you decide to in the future. I thought that it was thoroughly decent of them to give me this choice. Although I must say, I've run into zero problems with the 64bit architecture. It seems finally the people who write programs and drivers have got into the 64bit scheme of things. Still, it is good to have a choice.

So there you have it, a budget price PC with the spec and features of some not so budget machines. I've had it just over a week now and I've not regretted choosing this model once.

Ordered this as a Christmas present for my wife, and it arrived promptly within a few days. It worked for 2 days and then would no longer charge up. I emailed Amazon at 10pm, and somebody replied at 06:30am the next day, saying they would send another one out (no quibbles or questions), and please would I send the broken one back, postage to be reimbursed. The new one arrived three days later and it's a great laptop, easy to configure wireless connection, nice keyboard and screen. Battery life seems to be about 3-4 hours. Windows 7 is a bit strange at first, but it is very good for non-techie users, as it holds your hand for everything. Very pleased with the no-hassle Amazon service.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Where do I begin?
This is a very poor product but it had so many problems it is difficult to know where to begin listing them. But I'll try anyway...

(1) The battery. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Sarah Blair

2.0 out of 5 stars poor build
shockingly poor build quality. Moved mine from the table to a chair and the screen cracked. Was told by Toshiba that the warranty didn't cover this as it wasn't a manufacturing... Read more

Published 14 months ago by Norio Clue Sasaki

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect, Solid build, good spec.
Perfect for the high-end home user. Runs like a dream and good design. Screen is great for watching films on and the processor is good enough to run cpu intensive software... Read more

Published 15 months ago by bohobo

5.0 out of 5 stars toshiba laptop
this was a exellent purchase which took a long time to choose very good choice recommened to all easy to use and bang up to date on all software even windows 7 exellent programme

Published on 3 Jan 2010 by E. jones

3.0 out of 5 stars excellent delivery and product but poor service
I opened the product 2 days prior to Xmas Eve for my daughter Pressy to make sure that everything was OK but al;as no software to back it up I contacted Amazon who just passed me... Read more

Published on 31 Dec 2009 by Mr. L. R. Mortiss

4.0 out of 5 stars Good spec, cheap feel
The case has a very cheap feel, and I fear it won't withstand many knocks, but the spec is good, and no problems after the first month or so (once I'd uninstalled all the... Read more

Published on 22 Dec 2009 by Alex

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