Is this a good laptop deal?

[Jeffrey Schronce]

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshi...oductDetail.do

I think I will auto upgrade memory to 2 GB. Beyond that any concerns? I am not worried about 5400rpm disk. Probably my biggest concern is the Celeron M 420. How strong is this processor?
This laptop will have 1 program installed and runnning on it. The program is not super intensive, though it does involve large amounts of data and photos. The data processing is not that intensive, just a large database to pull from.
Thanks!
Jeff

[jerrye]

The company my wife works for leased a bunch of Toshibas and they have had to send almost all of them back for service. I recently upgraded my laptop and saw in my research that Toshiba has an active class-action lawsuit against them for some quality/warranty issues. Might I suggest researching this machine B4 jumping? I ended up with this:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Noteb...ategorylist.do
after a friend in IT looked at it and recommended it. Been very happy with it! My.02

[Jeffrey Schronce]

The company my wife works for leased a bunch of Toshibas and they have had to send almost all of them back for service. I recently upgraded my laptop and saw in my research that Toshiba has an active class-action lawsuit against them for some quality/warranty issues. Might I suggest researching this machine B4 jumping? I ended up with this:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Noteb...ategorylist.do
after a friend in IT looked at it and recommended it. Been very happy with it! My.02

That was my second choice. I like it better since I likely will not have to deal with the memory issue, plus it is 64 bit processor. I have only owned one AMD based machine and had to return it. Guess that kind of scares me.

Of course if I get the Toshiba maybe I can get in on that class action! LOL!

[Stytooner]

I bought a Toshiba Satelite a few years back and had to buy another MB for it last year. The MB was $200 on Ebay. Better than letting $1000 go to waste, but it was a decision that took a lot of head scratchin. I love the screen on the Satelite. Wide screen. I have a Thinkpad that is a lot more durable and has about the same speed processor. It was only $500 off lease on Ebay. It was a killer deal. I would buy an IBM again, but not a Toshiba. Check out Ebay on the Toshiba's. Many of them are there that have a slight problem. They don't work cause the need a MB.

It was a fun job to replace the MB, though. I learned alot.

[jerrye]

Acer +:
1GB upgradable to 4
best display I've seen yet
Grid Vista, a built-in drag-and-drop app that allows you to configure your screen to have up to 4 docs/pages/apps on screen at once, great for docs and image editing
NO BLOATWARE!

Acer-:
shorter battery life than most; I get ~2-2.5 hrs
not well known here; huge in Asia/Eastern Europe: my research showed 5th largest computer mfg in world

[onedash]

I got a gateway amd turion. my only regret is not spending a little extra on the X2. Same for my athlon desktop.....
I think most laptops have slower hard drives. conserves power and reduces heat......

Does anyone know if you'll see much improvment in performance by upgrading from 1GB to 2 or 4GB of ram? I added an extra 256MB to my desktop for a total of 1.25GB and noticed no improvment.
I know the faster memory is better if the bus supports it...
Is there a way to test your memory for speed? If you put one in thats slower they all run at the slowest speed right?

[sacherjj]

Generally on a laptop you see a big improvement on two fields when increasing memory. First, you swap less to the hard drive, so you get better speed. Second, you swap less to the hard drive, so you get lower power consumption and therefore better battery life.

Unless you are running some pretty serious applications, most memory over 2 Gig will be overkill.

[Wood_workur]

get an apple. the new mac os X is amazing, and very easy to learn.

[JSCOOK]

One of the hats I wear at work is IT Administrator (don't bother asking why) ... I have bought 2 Toshiba laptops within the last 2 years for salesmen ... first one died complete after 8 months (MB fried) and had to be replaced with a newer model ... second laptop in less than a month had problems, and IIRC had the DVD drive replaced, memory replaced, and the whole OS reinstalled (why OS I don't know) ... so I've bought my last Toshiba laptops for now ...

My own laptop is an Acer and has been absolutely great ... uses an AMD processor ... Acer has a gobal warranty program which is great as I can have it repaired/replaced anywhere in the world if there ever is a problem during the warranty period.

[siliconbauhaus]

acer's are good....they used to be texas instruments laptops

[tedkitch]

I've been in IT for a long time and I will never ever purchase another Toshiba notebook as long as I live. I've never had one that lasted. Over the years, I can think of at least 10 that we have purchased. For the last few years we have been purchasing Acer notebook (I have a Ferrari, which is awesome!) and we haven't had any issues with them at all. As someone else stated, the screens are incredible and they have way more bang for the buck than any other brand out there right now. You can see something in the price range that you were looking at here. One nice thing about Tiger Direct is that thier rebates don't take 6 months to get to you.

Hope this helps,