Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Small, Powerful, and Light Weight
By The Information
Once again Toshiba re-defines the marketplace with this incredibly powerful lightweight laptop. How can you beat this? It's only around five pounds and packs incredible power at an amazing price. It's a great deal by the best laptop maker out there. The positives totally outweigh the negatives, but I will mention the few problems. The system makes more fan noise than most other models. If the system were more expensive this would be a deal breaker, but again, this powerful laptop is cheap! The other problem is how the system performs out of the box. As usual the system comes with a ton of pre-installed garbage. It took me 4-8 hours to wipe the hard drive, re-image it with a clean OS, and install the Toshiba drivers. Once this was complete the system worked to my satisfaction. This would be a five star review if the system worked well out of the box. All things considered, Toshiba strikes again!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
The BEST student laptop!
By Andrea Horne
Being a college student, I am always looking for ways to save money. After a semester of living without a laptop and constantly having to go over to the computer lab which was anything but conducive to studying and writing, I finally realized it was time to buy my own laptop. With so many options on the market, I spent much of my winter vacation trying to figure out which model I would finally decide on. The driving factor in my decision was price. I knew that I wanted to spend under one-thousand bucks for the laptop and any needed accessories. I called up my brother, the computer whiz, and asked for his opinion. He told me to look into Toshiba, and that started my two week long search that ultimately led me to this laptop.I went to Best Buy, WalMart, Target, etc to test out many different models of many different laptops. The first thing I noticed with this Toshiba is the screen. For being only 14.1 inches, you barely notice that it is inferior in size to the bigger 17 inch models. The colors are vivid, the pictures are as clear as can be, and while testing watching DVDs on it, I felt like I was watching High Def. TV. I decided after that point to research the model farther, and eventually ended up buying it.I ordered my M115 from CompUSA and it arrived within two short days. I opened the box and started set-up. I was amazed at how few annoyances I had with a laptop that cost me so little. Usually you are going to sacrifice SOMETHING if you're buying a cheaper product, no matter what that product may be. Of course, as I delved deeper into testing this laptop, I figured out several reasons why it is in the budget category.Now that the laptop was home, it was time to start other tests. I had already tested the screen at the store, and like I said, it passed with flying colors. Next I tested the battery life. I put in my extended version of "The Return of the King" and let the battery run down. I kept the laptop at full brightness and did NOT use power saver mode. It took two hours and fifty-five minutes before the laptop shut off. This is EXCELLENT for a six-cell battery under the conditions I put it in.Next, I tested the laptop battery for word processing on the lowest brightness possible with power saver mode. The battery was empty after four hours and five minutes. I was extremely pleased with these results because I use this laptop for word processing in class where I can't charge it up if it runs out of battery, and over four hours is more than enough for me. However, if you are truly concerned about battery life, you can always buy a spare and keep it charged.After the battery had taken a good beating from all the testing, I started testing sound quality. I popped in my "Best of the Classics" CD and started messing around with the sound settings. On lower settings, the sound quality is not the best. However, the higher you put the volume, the better quality you will get from the speakers. I finally found the perfect spot on the volume adjuster for listening to CDs. However, I need to adjust when watching DVDs and Videos...generally you need to turn the volume up a bit for that. All in all, I was happy with the speakers and sound quality, but not blown away.After taking my CD out, I started opening every application on the laptop. This way, I could see approximately how many applications I could have open before the laptop either seized up or got horrendously slow. I opened the internet, my word processor, photoshop, my digital photography suite that is connected to my printer, my website editor and finally, I started running the virus-scan. This is a lot to ask of any computer, but especially of one that only runs on 512MB. I found that it ran the applications well up until I opened the website editor. It was just too much for the little M115 to handle. This was expected from a machine that only runs on 512MB, and I decided at that point that an upgrade to 1GB would be needed. I ordered another 512MB the next day, and can now run all the applications I want. From time to time they will slow up a bit, but the fact that it can even handle that work load is awesome and a definite must, since I'm a multi-tasker.This laptop comes with an 80GB HD, and some today say the new standard is at least 100GB. To be honest, I think that's a complete crock of sh**. I have an old Compaq (from 1999) that still works, and it has a 15GB HD, with only 11GB usable. If I can operate that machine (and I can), then 80GB is luxury. I have all the programs I need installed on this machine and I still have 55GB free. Will I use it? Probably not. Would I need 100GB? No way! Unless you are someone who is using cr**loads of programs that require installation on the computer, then there is NO need for anything bigger than 80GB while operating on a Windows XP machine. Maybe when it's time to upgrade to Vista, but for now, it is just not necessary. Besides, you will not be upgrading to Vista on this laptop. I know several Microsoft developers and they all have Vista already...and some of them can't even run it on machines with 100GB HDs and 2GB memory. So yeah, stick with XP and you will be fine with 80GB HD and 1GB memory (RAM).One annoyance I had after setting up this laptop is finding the amount of bloatware that came with it. It can be easily removed, but the fact that so much of it was even on my little M115 was a serious gripe for me. This is probably one of the reasons why it was so cheap--lots of manufacturers being advertised from start-up. I now have altered it to my liking, but it takes some time and patience.Another thing to keep in mind is that this laptop is not for extreme gamers. I do a lot of graphic design with digital photography and I can work from this laptop, but it isn't the best home-base for my work. This is more of a laptop that you would use for typical programs like the internet, word-processing, light gaming, light photo-editing, movie-watching, music listening and chatting. It's great for the TYPICAL user...but don't buy this laptop and then complain that you can't run your huge graphic-demanding games on it without giving up some quality...if you're in that boat, you should go with an Alienware.Some annoyances that have been listed with this laptop, other than battery life which I have already covered, are the keyboard and some complaints of overheating or loud fan noise. The keyboard is cramped. No two ways about it. This is a small laptop, and the keyboard is spread nicely on it, but it is still cramped. I have small hands so this is not a problem, but a someone with huge piano fingers would probably have a hard time with typing. A very hard time. Test the laptop out at a store before buying it, because if you don't you could be sorely disappointed. I did not notice ANY overheating...it gets warm, but in no way does it "overheat." There is some fan noise, but very little. It turns on every 5-10 minutes for about two seconds when using the laptop under normal use.My last note on this laptop is that I wish it had come with a faster processor. I have altered it so that it is up to what I want as far as performance goes, but come on, Intel Core 2 Duo is the standard now. Not Intel Core Duo. Hopefully Toshiba will change this on future M115 models, because I would love to get a younger sibling of this laptop at some point.For what I paid, I could not have gotten better. This laptop gets the job done and is the best of the best in budget laptops. Buy another 512MB of RAM, and you will be good to go.https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqqdqYXFe_cNBJl1WOollRxW3qpA4MI7_-nbXFq9HfiHDFxIolAdxXvHMamlMahnFzfugpcP83zIEe2vo5MewDSsd69yqkqkbHqfA0ereXxI_JZV6Z4vOj3TxWjRvB8FIPkLrIOo10c3w/s1600/rating+4.pngS:Screen Quality: 10/10Sound Quality: 7/10Operation Speed: 8/10 (after upgrade) or 6.5/10 (before upgrade)Battery life: 7.5/10 (excellent for a six-cell battery!!!)Out-of-box quality: 6/10Price: 10/10Design: 8/10Why not 10/10?Screen Qualiy deductions: -0. Probably one of the best screens I've ever seen.Sound Quality deductions: -3 for some tinniness in the sound when playing music or videos on a lower level of sound.Operation Speed deductions: -2 for a slower processor (after upgrade) and -3.5 for a slower processor and not enough RAM out of the box (before upgrade).Battery Life deductions: -2.5 for the hardy six-cell, because every modern laptop should come with AT LEAST a nine-cell. Again, good for what it is, but it's time to upgrade, Toshiba.Out-of-Box Quality deductions: -4 for annoying bloatware, slower processor and not enough RAM.Price deductions: -0...this is the BEST OF THE BEST in it's price range.Design: -2 for a cramped keyboard.OVERALL: 8/10
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Great performance and value for money
By segms
This is second laptop that I have owned. Compared to my old E-machines N10, this is a much better laptop. Some of the significant differences that I see between these two laptops are: I have no problem with wireless network using my Toshiba M115, I like the keyboard layout and the sound system on it.Another great future is that it allows you to watch DVD's without starting up the whole system, plus, it has S-video if you want to hook it up to your TV.Toshiba is an established brand in the market and if you want to sell it after using it a while, you will have anough buyers and your laptop will not depreciate in price that much. This is another reason why I bought this laptop.
See all 7 customer reviews...
be careful
Overheating problem
Good for some things.
