Toshiba Satellite A105-S4014 worth the money???

Has anyone had any problems with it. I am considering a Dell Inspirion E5105 also which is MUCH cheaper. About 500 dollars cheaper. What would you get? Suggestions/comparisions....

 

Is excellent option toshiba, quality screen and build quality, is the best, i had e1505 and bad quality screen, poor keyboard, I was in my hands 2 and sale.

500 dolars is much cheaper?, quality is the difference in dollars, thinkpad is more expensive, but the screen an build is the best.

Toshiba is nice screen, and quality is the best.

Sorry for my poor english.

Carlos Kuknow
Chile

 

Perhaps you should consider the FAQ and post there.

 

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Problems with my A105-S4014? YES, and this is my second unit.

I bought the first one from CompUSA two weeks back, and internet screen freeze-ups began immediately. Sometimes they would correct and become operable again, but never by simply *waiting* on the page; I would have to click off the page and over to another page in order to "jar" the frozen page back into action. Other times it froze up permanently and I had to close the window using CONTROL>ALT>DEL. And by "freezing up", I mean the icons lock up and nothing can be activated on the page. The pointer moves, but nothing highlights or responds.


This does not effect all windows simultaneously, by the way, but only individually and sporadically. It's constant -- I lose access to a page about every half-hour to two hours -- but I haven't noted a more reliable pattern to help me determine the cause. It happens after a page has been opened, NOT while first trying to access one, and this problem is across the board, no particular webpage causes the issue.


So I went and swapped it out for the same unit this afternoon. . . and here I am tonight having gone through three more screen freezes. What is up with this? I am on dial-up exclusively, and am not interconnected to any other units. Never had this issue with previous laptops. Access number is the same as always, nothing is new.

Also note: I have loaded ZERO programs into this unit (or the original one). this is out-of-the-box pristine, and I even went the extra mile and paid $20 for CompUSA's special prep service (I think they call it Comp Care?), where they remove useless or power-hogging applications (of which there are many on this unit, or so they tell me).

That extra $20 seems to have been no help, however. I plan to return it this week and go with another brand, probably HP. A friend has advised me that the Turion processor might be a comfortable alternative to this Centrino Duo-Core processor, which, by the way, was the main reason I went for the Toshiba. That, and I'd heard that Toshibas are soooooo reliable. UGH.


Anyone's input on this freeze-up issue would be very welcome. I'd keep it if I could solve it. I can make no deeper critique of the unit's performance, since I'm unwilling to invest time and effort into loading up my paint programs and the like.


_

 

It can't be both out-of-the -box pristine AND have had someone remove useless or power-hogging applications. Any chance they removed something that was in fact necessary?

 

Thanks, SeaLevel, good point . I suppose it's possible they were overzealous, not that I'd be able to tell. Ultimately, the problem has occured on both consecutive units now, so I'm going to face the fact that Toshiba and me are simply not meant to be . I'll be returning it for an HP core-duo this week.

By the way, anyone still considering this unit, I also read elsewhere that it has some "creakiness" in its joints -- on the left side of the keyboard, for one. I noticed it on my first unit, but this one not so much.

 

Interestingly enough, I recently purchased the A100-ST8211, and it has also exhibited the Internet Explorer lockup symptom.

I first tried slowing down the hardware acceleration for the video, and that appeared to take care of it. However, I also installed IE 7 Beta 2 shortly afterwards, and even with hardware acceleration on full the problem has not returned. So either thing might fix this problem.

 

Hi everyone.

miafortuna you solved your problem with your s4014 ?

I bought recently one notebook and I had the same problem with freezes.

I'm from Brazil and for me is hard to change my unit.

Sorry for my English mistakes

If you find the solution, that would be grateful.

 

That is so strange, I just bought the same machine and I am having the exact same issue - only my machine will freeze up in the same fashion regardless of whether I'm browsing the web, or working in other applications. I am going to try fiddling with the hardware acceleration and see if that helps, but if it doesn't, Toshiba is going to hear about it. And it won't be pretty - I used to work at a call centre doing tech support, and I know all their tricks to try to dump me off on someone else, or get me off the phone quicker to decrease their call times ... and I am not planning on budging until i see some results. I was really impressed with this machine's specs for the price, but not if I have to continually hard-reset it to keep working. bogus. I will post again after I've resolved the issue.

 

Try updating the Toshiba Fingerprint Utility for Windows XP to version 5.4.0, build 2934.

Check the support bulletin posted on their website. (Doc ID 98081997: Internet Explorer hangs or responds slowly)

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for the post akara, whan an odd issue -- the fingerprint reader screwing with IE. Hardly seems right.