Walmart's $348 17-inch Toshiba Satellite L355 reviewed: surprisingly awesome
By Darren Murph 
posted August 13th 2009 6:51AM
posted August 13th 2009 6:51AM
Looking for an ultra-cheap machine to take to school, are you? If you couldn't care less about extreme portability, Toshiba's shockingly inexpensive Satellite L355 (S7915) could be just the thing. $348 at Walmart nets you a 17-inch display (1,440 x 900), a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 CPU, Vista Basic, 3GB of RAM, a 250GB (5400RPM) hard drive, 8x DVD writer and GMA 4500M integrated graphics. The 7-pound machine was recently tested over at Laptop Mag, and critics were noticeably stunned at just how well the machine performed. The display was bright, the keyboard was more than adequate and the six-cell battery managed to hang on for over 2.5 hours in real-world testing. All in all, reviewers felt that the rig was perfectly suitable for handling schoolwork and other basic tasks, and save for the omission of a webcam, they couldn't find any huge beefs given the uncharacteristically low MSRP. 'Course, if you already snapped up that $298 Compaq, maybe you should just plug your ears here and pretend this whole thing never happened.
so is the laptop under priced or is the ZHD overpriced
2.2GHz Celeron 900 CPU, Vista Basic and GMA 4500M integrated graphics? Ouch!
It weighs too much to move around easily so who cares :).
Well, a ton of people who primarily use their laptop at home, and at the most move their laptop from the living room to the home office and back?
Nobody buys a 17" laptop if mobility is a priority anyway.
The reason you buy a 17" laptop is for the large high res screen. 1400x900? Yuck.
99.89 PPI, 0.2543mm
1440x900 @ 17in is a fine enough resolution for a computer of this processing power
Celeron. Yuck.
Exactly.
Based on Core 2 architecture..
The new celerons are good(Y)
any benchmarks on this celeron? Celeron is known for being the most horrible processor you can have
If you think Celeron is gross wait till you see this thing they call Atom.
This is a Penryn-3M chip, which means a Core 2 Solo without the steppings. This chip owns the earlier Merom based Core CPUs.
Can it play Crysis?
STFU !!!!
BTW how well does an atom compare to the celeron ? there cant be too big a performance difference , right ?
That 2.5 hour battery life is too low imho...
I, for one, thought Open's question was quite the valid one. I can humbly reply and say that no, this machine will have great difficulty playing the mother of beast games known as Crysis. In other though, laptops should come with stickers with a happy face "Yes, I can play Crysis" or a sad face "No, this cannot play Crysis." Thank you for your time.
Far more importantly... does it blend?
Are you kidding, the celeron would cream the atom:)
@neofolklore
And laptop makers should offer a $100 option "remove crapware before shipping".
Crysis is crapware which had its support stopped a while ago.
A 6lb/17inch notebook would have been the LEAST of my problems walking around in high school. There were times I felt like I was lugging around a brick or 2 on my back, between the text books and all the different writing books I used. I'm sure tons of students will welcome slapping everything into a laptop that replaces several heavy writing books, or a folder with writing paper and the fact that it's on a screen that won't make your eyes cross after an hour or more of constant use is I'd think a pro point for getting this over the smaller ones. I don't care what anyone says.....staring at an 8.9 to even 12 inch screen for hours CAN'T be harmless. If I use anything less than 15 inches for more than an hour I may as well take some Aleve beforehand because I know I'm getting a headache - regardless of the resolution I use.
I think this a pretty great. It def. rivals the laptops best buy is touting for school. 700+ dollar machines that, are pretty great - but imho overpowered and overpriced for the high schooler. Even college attending students don't need much more than this setup...and the fact that it's not wobbly or doesn't feel like it will fall apart is a good deal as well.
People talking about it being too heavy to move around are being ridiculous. I know women with bags that weigh in at more than 6lbs. Huge bags with their lives in it that they carry every, single day. I'd take comfortable 15 inch/5lb-6lb laptop any day over a 12 inch/3-4lb migraine inducer. Personally I think the sweet spot is 14 inches.
"If I use anything less than 15 inches for more than an hour I may as well take some Aleve beforehand because I know I'm getting a headache"
... I'm just not even going to say it.
What exactly do you expect for $350???
Want more? Pay more!
I want it for $49.95, $350 is too much.
Great email checker. Even does Aero!
I have a difficult time recommending a Toshiba Satellite laptop. I purchased the cheapest one they had a few years back from Best Buy. And while it does still work years later, it gets extremely hot. In fact it gets so hot, that the keyboard becomes too uncomfortable to use. Also the lower-left portion of the top gets really hot, and of course the entire underside gets hot.
Part of the problem is that they put the exhaust underneath it, making it difficult to breath if you don't have an ideal place to use it. Which if you plan to use this thing at school, you'll almost never have an "ideal" place to use it. Just my two cents. :)
That's because it probably had a crappy celeron from a desktop machine in it.
so basically a 17" netbook with a terrible resolution for that size.
If 1440 x 900 is not adequate for you, I found a nifty trick to work around static icons and font size; With Vista or Windows 7, hold down the "Shift+Ctrl" keys while scrolling with your mouse wheel.
You can obviously adjust font size in your browser as well, not to mention the start menu, notification area, and task bar.
It's $350. What do you expect?
L: a 15". What's the point in a battleship sized laptop if it can't even manage 1680x1050, let alone 1920x1200? May as well shed some weight.
Some people on Engadget are seriously out of touch with standard size/resolution ratios out there. Most 15" laptops have a 1280x800 screen and most people manage to use it without having to tear their eyeballs out, you drama queens.
That's actually not the lowest resolution you can find at 17". ::shudder::
celeron sucks
Two reasons to avoid this thing: Vista and Walmart.
Vista is fine, im sick of the abuse it gets. And no im not a fanboy but a reasonable user of a stable OS (ie: Vista)
I have an old Toshiba A85-S107 which was a similar cheap laptop from Toshiba a number of years back. I think it may have been like $399 or $499 at the time which was a steal. Essentially the same kind of specs and laptop for the time. It has been one of the longest lasting, problem-free laptops ever. My wife uses it still around the house. It edged out my old Thinkpad 600 as the toughest electronic travel companion ever. It's been all over the world, abused, used, ridden hard and put away wet. The only downside had been battery life at about 1.5hrs. Expensive and flashy can be nice, but sometimes efficient and cheap can be better.
Even if it was the exact same price, I'd definitely go for the Compaq, mainly to stay clear of the dreaded GMA 4500M, but also because of the inadequate resolution for such a big srceen, which reminds me about the fat old rear projection TVs.
Price is $448 on Walmart.com
Nevermind, I am a moron. Doesn't go on sale till Sunday 8/16/2009. And the one I found has a different model number.
This is a great way to off some of the old tech it's got under the hood.
Yeah, the only music this thing will play is old, cheap, soul maven, Clearance Carter.
Never cared much for Toshiba branded laptops, never seemed to offer the performance or overall good package.
It's really a stretch to find much to complain about with a sub-$400 computer that looks this decent. Although, it's gotta be worth an extra couple hundred for non-basic vista and non-celeron processor... and maybe a better screen res.
The price is what is important - regardless of what you think, most people are not carting their laptops with them everywhere they go.
Most laptops never leave the home.
This is perfect for someone who wants to get connected to the Internet and have a wordprocessor.
Not everyone needs or wants the latest, greatest, most portable computer.
Holly
www.thessayist.com
17 inches?! Are they insane!? People these days are far to weak and fatassed to carry something like that, this isn't the 1980's you know. Also I find it funny how many people are confused by the Celeron brand name still linking it to the old desktop chips. Good job intel marketing droids.
That's what she said.
I can't keep up with the Win7 upgrade path/plan. Is this machine eligible for a discount/free upgrade to Windows 7?
Can it run Quake 3? My iPWN can!
At the moment I have an older very similarly spec'd Toshiba laptop with what looks like the same chassis (albeit mine has a smaller screen) sitting on my desk at home running Windows 7 very neatly.
If it is the same chassis, it's a durable, decent unit, and the specs should fulfill all the basic computing needs. High end games, no; specialized high end software, no. MS Office, Photoshop, internet browsing and media playing? Absolutely.
Yea, but will it plat CoH and Counter-strike (I'm old school)