HOT??? - Toshiba Laptop A15-S157 - $850 AR

[Taqbascoman]

The CompUSA Flyer in the paper today has this for $850 after rebates and are also offering about $350 worth of other Essentials for Free after Rebate. Seems like a great price...Dell was about $1,100 for the same thing.

It has 512 ram, 40 gig and interl wireless. It does not have XP Pro or USB 2.0 or firewire. Still a nice starter unit.

Any comments? Anyone have one of these?

Fist time posting.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product%5Fcode=303455&csearch=1&cmid=gosku&pfp=srch1

 

[Taqbascoman]

Looking for input before buying. Thanks.

 

[Tiembo]

I picked up the A15-S127 at Best Buy. It has a slightly slower processor (2GHz), less RAM (256MB) and a smaller HD (30GB), but everything else is about the same. It didn't come with the built in wireless card, so I picked it up for around $70. Total was $700 AR + card. I *think* this deal is still going on, but I'm not sure.

So far, I like this laptop. It has just the basics, no extra buttons or frills. Most of the hardware (HD, Memory, Proc, Battery) are easily accessible for upgrades.

I wiped out XP Home and installed XP Pro. Actually, I tried Win2k first, but Toshiba's drivers only seem to work with XP (according to their tech support). And I thought just about anything that worked in XP would work in 2k...I guess not.

 

[pilgrim2u]

I have the toshiba satelitte 1115-s103

I bought this unit about 6 months ago from CC. I had to wait 4 months for the rebate from toshiba. :-(

Mine has the celeron 1.5, it also came with the usb 1.1
I do not like the keyboard or the smaller HD, it came with a 20 gig.

I got this on a great closeout deal. 500 dollars.
I have 512 ram, barely enough. Mine came with xp.
Mine also came with a dvd player.
Many people do have problems with USB 2.0 upgrade cardbus's

Saying all this, I would buy it again

 

[fonzinator]

CompUSA website shows $1197 after a $50 MIR. BestBuy is also offering this same unit for $850 after rebates. This appears to be a great machine for the money. I've been reseaching it for the past few days because my sister needs a laptop. I couldn't find a better machine anywhere for the price!

What are is the software that CUSA is offering for free with this machine?? Website says nothing about this.

 

[fonzinator]

Originally posted by: pilgrim2u
I have the toshiba satelitte 1115-s103

I bought this unit about 6 months ago from CC. I had to wait 4 months for the rebate from toshiba. :-(

Mine has the celeron 1.5, it also came with the usb 1.1
I do not like the keyboard or the smaller HD, it came with a 20 gig.

I got this on a great closeout deal. 500 dollars.
I have 512 ram, barely enough. Mine came with xp.
Mine also came with a dvd player.
Many people do have problems with USB 2.0 upgrade cardbus's

Saying all this, I would buy it again

The A15 comes with a CD-RW/DVD combo drive. Another plus for the A15 - The Celeron chip has 256k of L2 cache = good.

 

[DaveSimmons]

We just bought one of these for work to take to trade shows. Only minor point is that it has no S-Video (TV-out) so don't plan to hook it to a TV.

I had no problem setting up Win2000 server, the intel mobo and video drivers for W2K on the Toshiba website seemed to work fine. I think the audio driver worked OK too, but didn't test it. No idea about the other drivers like for power monitoring.

One gotcha on the 512MB models, they already have both SODIMM slots filled (2 x 256 instead of 1 x 512) so if you want to add more RAM you need to replace one or both of the 256MB sticks with 512MB sticks.

Overall it's a good laptop for the price as long as you don't need gaming capability (intel xtremely-bad graphics).

 

[kimagurealex]

I am still waiting for another 599 dollars deal of the slim laptop I want to use it in the library for interactive learning and homework since I have a powerful DELL desktop at home.

Alex

 

[Taqbascoman]

My local paper/Ad says: buy as laptop/desktop for $600 or more and get $350 worth of stuff for free AFTER rebates.

Stuff includes:

1. Cannon Printer ($50)
2. Wordperfect Office 11 ($100)
3. SMC Wireless Card or USB Adapter ($40)
4. UPS ($30)
5. SMC Wireless Router ($80)
6. Epson Scanner ($80)

They give you $350 in rebates if you spend the extra $350.

 

[Tiembo]

Originally posted by: Taqbascoman
My local paper/Ad says: buy as laptop/desktop for $600 or more and get $350 worth of stuff for free AFTER rebates.

Stuff includes:

1. Cannon Printer ($50)
2. Wordperfect Office 11 ($100)
3. SMC Wireless Card or USB Adapter ($40)
4. UPS ($30)
5. SMC Wireless Router ($80)
6. Epson Scanner ($80)

They give you $350 in rebates if you spend the extra $350.

Wow, that's pretty cool. The router's probably the most useful of the bunch.

Do you have to buy all six items, or can you just purchase the ones that you need? I'm guessing that you'll be paying $350 + tax, and they'll just give you $350 worth of rebates?

 

[Taqbascoman]

Probably so....but I could use the router/card for my other laptop, give the printer away as a x-mas gift, keep the scanner (my brother is using mine old one), I need the ups for my laptop. So the $100 Wordperfect is the waste of money.....but then again if i get ALL my renates back then all of this only cost me $30. Not bad since I can make use of most of it. I could always sell wordperfect office 11 for $50 on Ebay at the least.

 

[jrichrds]

Shucks, it'd be hotter if they gave the stuff to you for free through Instant Rebate. Then you wouldn't have to verify how reliable each rebate is, given CompUSA's not-so-stellar rebate track record.

The A15 series are nice laptops. Designed and manufactured by Toshiba, rather than an outsourced Compal unit with the Toshiba name slapped onto it. It's the successor to the 1415 series. What it gains is 2 USB 2.0 ports (vs. 3 USB 1.1 ports on the 1415). But it drops the nVidia GeForce4GO video with dedicated DDR memory (in favor of integrated Intel graphics), 1 CardBus slot, and the floppy.

So it does have USB 2.0 ports. And it uses the mobile Celeron with 256kB cache (basically, P4 Northwoods with half the cache), rather than the hot and power hungry desktop Celerons with 128kB cache that other companies will use (like the Dell Inspiron 1100s).

 

[cbrsurfr]

I've had a Toshiba 1805-S177 for about 18 months now. I've been really happy with it. Rock solid laptop. For a general use laptop this one looks pretty good. My next lappy will probably be a dell though....the low end video cards in these Toshibas are too crappy for me.

 

[jrichrds]

Originally posted by: cbrsurfr
My next lappy will probably be a dell though....the low end video cards in these Toshibas are too crappy for me.

The $650 Toshiba 1415 laptop deal from last year had an nVidia Geforce4 420GO with 16MB DDR dedicated memory. Can't say that about any of the $900 or less Dell deals since then, with their integrated graphics and shared video memory.