Just be careful when plugging it in! (Toshiba Satellite Pro L300)

Member Name: Deb_C

Product:	Toshiba Satellite Pro L300
Date:	03/11/09 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: pleasant to use, fast, reliable software

Disadvantages: power jack prone to becoming loose

In January I bought my Toshiba Satellite L300-1G6 for the bargain price of £399 from John Lewis. Overall it is an extremely good laptop, however I was prompted to write this review by the fact that it now has a fault!

I'll just explain the fault first as apparently it's quite a common one with Toshiba Satellite laptops, although it is one that should be easily fixed. I recently noticed that it was getting more difficult to plug the charger into the laptop in order to charge the battery or use mains power, & soon realised that the power jack (the little metal bit that the charger plugs into) was quite loose & wobbly. I looked this up online, & found that it was common with these laptops, & also that it was a fire hazard & I could also potentially ruin the laptop's motherboard if I kept using it in that condition! So obviously I stopped using the laptop straight away.

Luckily the laptop is still under warranty (you get 1 year's warranty from Toshiba, plus if you buy from John Lewis they give you another year free). I was pleased to discover that I didn't have to organise posting the laptop off anywhere. I went onto Toshiba's website, found the warranty section, typed in some details about my laptop & the fault, & then waited for them to phone me to arrange for a courier to collect it from my house. They say they'll ring you within 4 hours of you reporting the fault (or in the first 4 hours of the next working day if you report it out of hours). I was very impressed as I reported it at around 11pm last night & a very polite lady phoned at 10am this morning to say someone would be around to collect it tomorrow. She also assured me that this fault was covered under warranty & admitted that it is a known fault (I had been a bit worried they might try to say I'd damaged it myself & therefore it wasn't covered by the warranty).

Having said all that, this is actually a really good laptop for typical home use & I'm really pleased I chose it.

The laptop looks very stylish & is very pleasant to use. The keyboard requires just the right amount of pressure to type on. In comparison to my old Dell laptop, the buttons (the ones that are the equivalent of the left & right mouse buttons) are quite 'clicky', i.e. you have to press quite hard to push them down & they make a clicky noise which my boyfriend says is annoying! I think it would be better if they were slightly less stiff but it's not exactly a major problem, especially when you're using the touch pad most of the time anyway.

I particularly like the screen as the colours are bright & vivid, everything looks crisp & clear, & you can look at it from any angle without the picture 'disappearing'.

The laptop came with Windows Vista which I was expecting to dislike, but now I've got used to it I actually prefer it to XP. It looks good, is easy to use & has handy extra features. I'm looking forward to trying Windows 7 though. The laptop comes with basic software such as Microsoft Works. There's a free trial of Microsoft Office that expires after 60 days.

There's an integrated webcam which would be handy to many people, although I've never used it. One slightly annoying thing is that I can't find any way of disabling the webcam software (I suppose you could delete it completely but I don't really want to do that). The application stays hidden until you move your cursor to the very top of the screen, then the controls appear - it's annoying if you're trying to click something at the top of the screen but the webcam controls appear & get in your way. This doesn't happen very often though. You can also choose for it to be hidden at the side of the screen instead but that seems to get in the way even more!

The battery life is very good. I've never timed it, however Toshiba claims it will last 2.5 hours. I'd estimate that it tends to last me around 2 hours.

I can't really claim to understand all the technical specifications of laptops, but apparently the Intel Pentium processor runs at 2.16GHz & there's 2GB of RAM. Basically, I've always found the computer to be very fast & have never really had any problem with the software. It has 160GB memory on the hard drive, which is plenty for normal home use. I don't play a lot of PC Games but I've installed Sims 2 & it works very well (much faster than on my old laptop). I'm not sure how well newer games would work as it's not really designed as a gaming laptop.

There is a CD/DVD drive that can write to DVDs, as well as a memory card slot & 3 USB slots (handily located at the sides). Like most laptops now, it has an integrated wireless internet receiver & I've had no problems with this. It's very easy to connect to the internet. One thing the laptop does not have is the ability to connect via BlueTooth.

The screen measures 15.4" & the dimensions of the laptop are 362mm wide x 267mm deep x 33mm high. It weighs 2.5kg.

Overall I would recommend this laptop, just be especially gentle when plugging in the charger!

Summary: A great laptop for a bargain price

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