Having your own Toshiba Satellite A355-S6931 notebook PC lets you experience a quality performance with all its features. It has 16 inches of LCD, coupled with 16:9 aspect ratios, and a 720p highly defined resolution. It is powered with today’s popular Intel Core 2 Duo processor class that is designed with Centrino 2 technology, perfectly intended for its incomparable speed that also saves on the portables’ longer battery life.
It is also equipped with a web camera that makes your video chats worthwhile. It also has a Toshiba Face Recognition that allows you to sit back and relax because of its amazingly hands-free way of logging into your own Toshiba Satellite A355-S6931 notebook PC. It also provides a maximized and improved multimedia and multi-tasking performance with its fast 1066 MHz front-side bus and 3 MB of L2 cache.
It has Intel’s 5100AGN wireless LAN that easily connects to drafts 802.11n routers and also works well with an 802.11a/b/g networks. In addition, its other features includes a huge 320 GB hard drive, 5 in 1 memory card reader, maximized 4 GB of RAM, draft-N WiFi networking, Intel GMA X4500MHD integrated graphics for up to 1750 MB of superbly shared video memory, and Toshiba’s Fusion finish that has a Constellation Black pattern. This portable model has already has an installed version of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium that turns your laptop PC into an ultimate home entertainment center.Most Helpful Customer Reviews
By Daniel G. Lebryk
This is my second Toshiba laptop. Number one is around 4 years old and still works well.
This review is more about the A355 chassis, than this exact spec laptop, and should apply to just about every one of the laptops in this series whether they run AMD or Intel chips.
The first view is that the materials are just plain flat out gorgeous. From the shiny exterior, to the semi rounded base, the two large chrome mouse buttons, the nicely integrated Harmon Kardon speakers, the illuminated touch areas, the big beautiful monitor, and those shiny keys. Yes this is one very pretty computer.
Under that pretty hood are some interesting specs. It used to be incredibly rare to see an eSATA port on any computer, let alone a laptop. Well this one has exactly that - an eSATA port that doubles as a USB port. Nice option to hook up external hard drives. It also includes an iLink, Firewire, or IEEE-1394 port - an incredible rarity (even Apple dropped this port). The audio ports and volume control are on the front, nicely placed. There’s absolutely no ports on the rear. There’s also an express card slot (not a PCMCIA slot, but EXPRESS card slot) and a multi flash memory card reader (they’ve dropped CF from the list). It does not include Bluetooth - a very strange omission since every single bluetooth adapter uses the Toshiba stack to run. Use either of these adapters, they work perfectly: IOGear GBU421 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Micro Adapter or Cirago BTA3210 Class 2 Micro Bluetooth Adapter (Black Tip) - both are outstanding miniscule adapters.
Toshiba stuffed 4Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard drive into this big baby. Those are some pretty nice features in a laptop this inexpensive. Those Harmon Kardon speakers sound very nice.
You’ll either hate this or love it, and fortunately you can turn this off if you hate it. The Toshiba name, a little band above the scratchy navigation pad, and the media buttons all light up white (pretty bright at that). I think it looks pretty cool, but others have hated all those lights.
The monitor, oh that monitor is gorgeous. Movies pop, they look absolutely fantastic on this computer. It’s a nice big screen. Yes it is a gloss finish and you do get some reflections here or there, but generally it’s not bad.
The keys are all glossy and the fanatical among you might not like all the visible fingerprints, but I think most will get over that quickly. There is just a ton of room to put your hands to type and use the computer. That surface in front is sweet for a palm rest.
Function-wise, this computer is a decent performer. Nobody is buying this to run heavy games or render video - it won’t do those things. But for the occasional game, the occasional video edit, you’ll score well here.
Do note, this computer runs Windows Vista Premium 64-Bit. Please don’t be afraid of that operating system. I’m running 64 bit on two computers and it runs just beautifully. There is almost no new hardware that won’t run under 64 bit these days. It’s a rock solid platform. And that OS allows all 4Gb of memory to be seen and used (32 bit tops out at 3Gb). And if you don’t believe me, type this into google - pcmag 64 bit computing. Read the first article in that hit list.
This is no lightweight computer. It’s a big, pretty heavy laptop. Great for around the house. Not something you would travel everywhere with. But it is portable. Heat generation is nothing extreme. It does pull air in from below, so be careful about couches or beds plugging those holes.
It’s a good solid fast computer. There’s a bit of fan noise, nothing huge, but you will know the machine is running. I hate to comment on battery life, that’s so dependent on how bright you make the screen, processor speed settings and the like. I got a good solid 2 hours of hitting it very hard at max everything. You could probably get a good 3 hours, maybe 4 at more conservative settings.
Something to keep in mind, Toshiba ships all their laptops full of bloat-ware. It’s a really good idea to remove it all. Almost none of it is necessary. There are two websites that will clear all that garbage out of your computer. It’s explained in a great article at PCMag. Type this into google, PCMag make the most out of your new pc. The first hit will be a fantatstic article on how to remove the garbage.
Overall, this is a big, beautiful, good sounding, heavy, hard working, well priced laptop.
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