Toshiba A105-S101

Does anyone have experience with the quality, etc. of this laptop? Is it a good deal for $500 new at Best Buy? What are the pros and cons of this model? Thanks

 

its ok got nice features just a basic processor, add 256 of ddr2 memory for about 30 dollars more and you should be good to go. Media Player controls and nice widescreen

 

Some specs or a link might help, but as Upscooper said, Toshibas generally have good glossy screens. However, given the price, I'd assume that there is an Intel Celeron in that notebook, which doesn't get the best battery life. I'd try looking at an AMD Sempron CPU if you want better batter life/performance or better, a P-M or Turion CPU.

 

I have one and it's pretty decent for the money. I maxed out the memory to 2GB, turned off the paging file and it's pretty fast. I use it for browsing, WP and other generic tasts so I can't judge it's use for gaming, but I would hazard a guess that the radeon xpress 200M with shared memory won't cut it for the current crop of games.

Battery life sucks (barely an hour) so if you want to use it on the road, you'll need a higher capacity. The glossy screen has great contrast.

Where did you see it for $500? I haven't seen it go below $580.

 

The specific A105 might be talking about may be a special at BestBuy.

 

Best Buy is rumored to have it for $500 this weekend.

 

Actually, it's the L25 and it's going to be on sale for $400 at Best Buy.

See this Link: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2755

 

Thats this weeks laptop deal. Next week, starting sunday 2/12, the a105-s101 will be 499.

 

The flyer shows a104-s101 at $499 plus in store upgrade 512 ddr2 total memery. Beware only 6 minimum per store Better hurry

 

O.K. - I see it. Looks like a pretty nice deal if you ask me.

 

I had my wife standing outside our local Best Buy when they opened and got one of these notebooks. Price was right and it had the free memory upgrade. I'm quite happy with it. I had purchased an Acer a few days before and paid 150.00 more for it. I took that back after I got the Toshiba. I have no complaints yet.

 

Hope everything goes well for you and your new notebook

 

Got myself a cheap A105-S1013 (512megs of ram) at Office Depot yesterday. Pretty happy with it so far, everything seems pretty snappy. I know this puppy doesn't support dual channel. I'm planning on buying a cheap 1gig stick, what should I get? Do I need to get pc4200 ddr2 memory?

 

Did you get a P-M? If so, you'll be able to run DDR2 RAM in your notebook.

 

No, I got a Celeron 380. It comes with 512meg of pc4200 ddr2 ram. I assume it serves no use on my pc, since it doesn't support dual channel. Can I put in a pc4200 ddr memory in there and pair it with the ddr2 memory? Or does both need to be ddr2?

 

Never mind, I just ordered 1 gig of pc4200 ddr2 ram for 80 bucks. It seems to be cheaper than the ddr memory anyways.

 

Hmm...

DDR2 RAM with DDR1 RAM - I'm not sure if that'll work. I'm no RAM expert, so you might want to ask around in the Notebook upgrades section and see if that'll work. I'm pretty sure it will, but not 100%.

 

What am I missing?

The S1013 comes with 1 512MB stick of DDR2 RAM AND the Celeron. jcy bought additional 1GB stick of DDR2 RAM. No mixing of DDR and DDR2 in that.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't DDR2 memory physically different from DDR memory in terms of pin-count/notch position, which would prevent mixing of the two types?

 

Confirm..you're right.

 

Quickie review for my laptop A105-S1013:

Pros:
Cheap! (689+200rebate+tax) The build is surprisingly good. I moved the laptop around with the screen open, holding it by the keyboard and did not notice any flexing.
Beautiful screen, easily compares to the hp brightview on the dv5000z that I had. No dead pixels on mine.
Wireless works great. (Linksys router)

Cons:
Weak battery - Since I use it as a living room desktop, didn't affect me too much.
Too big - In my opinion, a 15 inch laptop is too big to lug around and should serve mainly as a desktop replacement. 14 inches is probably a better idea if you plan to travel around with your laptop.
Keyboard is crappy, especially the tab key/del key. Wish they put the dvd buttons on top of the keyboard and increased the tab key size.
Missing firewire, express54, svideo, probably a good idea given that it's a celeron cpu.
Loaded with a lot of junk software.

Notes:
After removing the junk and doing some windows tweaks, I got super pi to 2million at 2:13 (without additional ram).
I bought a gig of ram for 80 bucks, so it's close to 600 bucks now total.

Bottom Line:
Feels snappy right out of the box. Highly recommened for around 500 bucks.

 

Last post on my laptop A105-S1013, I promise...

Installed my 1 gig ocz (on sale for 81+9 rebate). Booted fine with no issues. Shows 1.37 gigs of ram with 128meg used for graphics. Both slots are easily accessible. If you don't have that much experience adding in ram, make sure you push the ram chips all the way in at a 45degree angle(the notch on the chip should not have any gaps).

Surprisingly, Super Pi to 2 Million went down by about 10 seconds, not sure what's going on there. Overall system performance feels a bit more snappy, but not by much, may depend on the application. I think if you are cash strapped, you'll be fine with the standard 512.

Found out the celeron 380M does not support undervolting, typical CPU temp ranges from 41-49 degrees C depending on the application. May get a laptop cooler in the future.

One thing that is an annoyance. The brightness that I set for my screen (I like it half way) always gets reset when I turn the laptop off. Anyone know how to make the settings more permanent?


Enjoy

 

Did you try "Toshiba Power Saver Properties"? The "full power" profile is the default for A/C and "normal" for battery. You can set brightness there. It works for me.

 

Did you peeps have problem with the life of battery? I just bought one and the battery only last about 20-30 minutes. I physically looked at the battery and there is a sticker on the battery said 4 cells. Does this laptop come with standard 4 cells battery or I got the wrong battery. Thanks.

 

A 4-cell? The A100 series comes with a 6-cell standard if I'm not mistaken - however, I think that the 4-cell might come with Celeron models. What are your specs?

 

The A105-S101 and A105-S101X comes with the 4 cell battery. The CPU is the Celeron 380 1.6Ghz. The only difference between the A105-S101 and the A105-S1013 is that the S1013 ships with 512MB RAMand the S101 with 256. Best Buy sells the A105-S101, Office Depot sells A105-S1013 and Circuit City sells A105-S1014.

 

Hmm...

Well, I guess you get what you pay for, but I would rather annoyed if my notebook came with such a battery.