I have a five year old Toshiba Satellite L305D-5950. It's very similar to the 5930 in the picture above. Overall it's been a reliable laptop, much more so than a couple of other leading brands I've owned over the years. I'll definitely be considering Toshiba when it comes time to replace this one. Hopefully that time won't be too soon though. Ease of Use This model comes with Windows Vista on it. If you've used any version of Windows from 7 on backwards, then Vista should contain few, if any, surprises. If you're coming off Windows XP the only thing that might throw you for a minute is the new ribbon version of MS Office. Battery Life I use it on the moderate power settings and have not experienced any issues with the battery. I haven't even had to replace it yet which is great for a five year old laptop. Support & Service The laptop comes with all sorts of diagnostic tools on it, and Toshiba's website is fairly comprehensive for answering questions. It needs to be, because phone support is not terribly easy to get ahold of. Speed/Performance The laptop comes with 3 GB of RAM upgradeable to 4 GB. That's acceptable for the time being. I've upgraded RAM and have the unit on moderate performance settings with custom virtual memory settings and a USB stick dedicated to Winboost. I will probably have to tweak it further for higher performance settings before too long. I can see a point in the not too distant future where I'll have to retire this unit for offline use only due to having maxed out the RAM possibilities. Design This is a very user friendly design. The keyboard is nice and clicky, the ports are all easy to get to, the screen is a comfortable-to-read 15.4 inches, it has a webcam and mic, and there's a mouse pad for easier on-the-go use. It comes with 60 days of the trial version of 2007 Office Home and Student and 60 days of free Norton Antivirus. Durability I'm pretty impressed with the durability of this little laptop and I'll definitely consider going with Toshiba again. I have been using a notebook cooler because it does tend to run hot if you don't, and it will shut itself down when it reaches a temperature that might damage it. I had a memory stick go bad and used that as an excuse to upgrade to the maximum 4 GB of RAM. The battery is running strong after five years and the software is holding up with only minor hiccups that might be more my fault than the Toshiba's. The only thing that's not really aces is the internal optical drive. It's a Matshita. The proper word for it is inside the brand name. It started giving me trouble from the word go and has recently decided it doesn't want to go anywhere anymore, prompting me to get an external optical drive. Overall though, for a budget laptop this Toshiba Satellite is a great value.

el71

Tampa, FL

I have had this laptop for years now and it's still as good as new. I actually had to reboot it a few times but it gained its full speed back quickly. The best thing to do is remove bloatware and trying to keep the laptop clean literally and in computer terms. I use this for video playback and it can actually output 1080p playback with a good video codec. However, I have a feeling the color is not as great as a ps3 or any real blu-ray player. However, it is totally acceptable and is very portable. This is good to bring to starbucks and use their wi-fi and the battery life is decent depending on what you are doing. However, I have had no problems with this laptop so far and plan to keep it for as long as I can.

HenryMakdonaldz

Rosemead, CA

Hello, I am a normal guy that just bought this laptop for about 4 years now it is still good as new. I reboot it a few times and it is still as fast and powerful as it always was. The great thing about this laptop is that it never let me down. I can play full blu-ray 1080p playback with a good codec system with only minor buffer screens. The graphics card isn't good for professional gaming but is good for videos and movies. I tried 1080p videos on tvs and it looks pretty awesome but not the best. The internet network card is an acceptable range and the battery life is okay depending on what you do. This is good for beginners and people doing minor things with a computer. However, with all the vista themes and effects, it doesn't run too fast, but when I dropped it down to XP style, it is really fast.

darksilence626

Rosemead, CA