My Review of Toshiba Satellite A40

I just bought my Toshiba Satellite A40 a week ago, and I thought I would post my first impressions here for any potential buyers. The A40 seems to be a Canadian model, but from what I can tell, it is like the A45 elsewhere. My system has the following specs:

-Celeron 2.7GHz
-512mb RAM
-64mb Intel shared video
-40gb hard drive
-DVD/CDRW combo (8xDVD/24xCD-R/10xCD-RW/24xCD)
-802.11g
-15" display
-4 usb ports (2 on left side, 2 on back), parallel port , vga out port, 1 pc card slot, RJ11 and RJ45 jacks.

I was looking around for the last couple of months, and found a number of computers in my budget, with the hardware specs I wanted. But ultimately I chose the Toshiba for reasons including: the reputation of the manufacturer and warranty (something I don’t care about when buying a desktop, but do care when buying a laptop), the size and brightness of the screen, the feel and layout of the keyboard. That’s right, it wasn’t hardware that sold me, because I knew what I wanted. It was a matter of choosing between several computers with similar specs.

Rather than split all the details of the computer into pros and cons, I think it's more useful (and easier!) to just discuss them one at a time.

It has an excellent 15" TFT display. It's very bright, and you can even adjust the refresh rate. This is something that I have not seen on many laptops... the argument sales people give you is that you don't need to adjust refresh rate on a TFT, but this is not true. I have gotten headaches or dry, itchy eyes with other machines at low refresh rates, like, say the standard laptop 60Hz. But I have my Toshiba set to 85Hz and it isn't causing me the least bit of irritation. This is important to me, because I have horrible eyesight, and tend to use the computer for long stretches…

Next comes the keyboard, which is the best I've seen on a laptop. The keys are where they should be (ex. the Function key isn't where Control should be). And Home/Pgup/Pgdn/End/Ins/Del are each on an individual key; you don't have to hit Function to reach them. I also like the spacing and feel of the keys. I am a grad student, and obviously, I have to do a lot of writing, so the keyboard is wonderful for me.

The touchpad is ok, as far as touchpads go.... obviously a mouse is always better. But you can set it so that pages scroll down and across if you slide your finger along the right and bottom edges. Toshiba also has some software on the computer that lets you program the corners of the pad to launch various programs, but I found this a nuisance and just uninstalled it. I should also mention that at the top of the keyboard are 4 buttons to control your CDs/DVDs (play, pause, etc.) But from what I can tell, these only work with Windows Media Player (which I HATE), so they're not useful for me.

The wireless card is awesome. I managed to get a wireless router bundled with my computer, so I have a little home network going, and it works really well. It picks up signals without problems (I've tried a couple of friends' houses, etc.)

The hard drive seems to perform ok, and is very quiet (barely audible). I like the fact that there were no partitions of the drive (which are often not the size I want them, so I end up repartitioning them), and that they didn’t take up huge chunks of space with useless programs. In fact, there’s only 3gb of pre-installed software, which includes Windows XP Home, various Toshiba utilities, and some CD/DVD burning software (yes, they include DVD burning software on a computer that can’t burn DVDs). The utilities are of varying degrees of usefulness; for example, they let you play with touchpad and battery life settings. There’s a cool little program that slows down the CD/DVD drive when you’re watching a movie so that it doesn’t make noise and disturb you… right on! There’s also voice recognition software, but this is probably cosmetic. Prospective buyers should take note that no real word processor was included (except WordPad); you would have to get one on your own.

Only two things annoyed me with the software. One was that most of it had been placed on the system tray, so when I first turned the computer on, I was faced with a dozen little icons. My advice is to just get rid of the ones you don’t need, because they’re eating up your RAM needlessly. The other annoying thing was that the manual included in the box is useless, except for really basic things (like how to turn the computer on). There was no explanation for any of the software.

Now let me get to the performance. First, I really felt no need to invest a couple of hundred dollars more on a Pentium 4. My desktop is a Celeron 1.1GHz, and even that is ok for most things I do. So the Celeron 2.7 is just perfect. There were a few graphics programs (like Blender) that my desktop couldn’t handle well due to the video card, but the 64mb shared video on my laptop has no difficulties with them. I’ve tried running some 3d games too (no, not the newer ones, but games like Ghost Recon, Age of Mythology, and Red Alert 2), and they all run beautifully. Honestly, there aren’t any performance problems at all, so I’m really glad I didn’t dish out for the Pentium 4 (obviously, if you’re a hardcore gamer, then you need a P4, but I doubt most people do.)

The biggest surprise with this computer was the battery life. When I bought it, I was counting on about 1.5 hours of life, because the store rated it at 2 hours, and I thought I was being smart by underestimating like you would for most laptops. In fact, if I set it to the max battery setting, I get 4 - 4.5 hours of life!! Unbelievable. Well, maybe not when you consider it has a huge 12 cell battery in it. I haven’t done a test yet for battery life on a medium setting while, say, watching a DVD, but I suspect it will be around 2 hours.

I bought this computer as a desktop replacement, and it does that job well. That means, unfortunately, that it’s a bit heavy (7.7lbs). But that’s ok for me. The truth is it will spend more time on my desk than anywhere else. Another potential downside is that, since it isn’t a low-voltage Centrino, it gets fairly hot when in battery mode (because the fan doesn’t work as much). Then again, it’s really cool when plugged in.

So my overall rating for this computer is excellent. It’s functional, seems solidly built (with the caveat that it **is** a laptop after all), and performs smoothly. It’s so neat to know I got something I like this much, after those couple of months of agonizing over what to get! I hope this review is as helpful to others as reviews I found here were to me.

 

hey there, thanks for posting your thoughts on the Toshiba A40 series, it's always great to get an honest and straight up review that others can benefit from as they research laptops they would like to buy.

we'd love it if you could stick around as the weeks and months go by and answer any questions that come up in the forums regarding the A40 and Toshiba notebooks in general. there's an unlimited supply of questions to be had!

 

John,

I got an email from you and then sent a couple of emails to your Yahoo.com address regarding this review...it seems for some reason you might not be getting those emails? Hopefully you see this and email me and give me an alternative email address to send to, it was regarding your interest in writing a fuller review of the A40.

/andrew

 

I too have the Canadian A40, although mine has a P4. Other than that difference all the specs are the same. I've had it for about a week now and I'm very happy so far. I did have one little problem though...there was this awful buzzing sound coming from the left rear by the RJ45 and USB ports. It was pretty quiet at first but ramped up to a high-pitched squeal which, in a quiet room, was extremely irritating. It seemed to build as i used the touchpad. If I connected anything to any USB port the sound ceased. Somebody else who has a similar problem with their IBM suggested this solution: In the Windows Device Manager, open the properties of the USB Root Hub and uncheck the box that says "Allow computer to turn off this device to save power". So far so good...