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.
Yes it will play CoH at those specs. Heck, it will probably play Champions Online too. Intel GMAs are actually quite good for the average game, just not the uber ones. Vista Basic is kinda a bummer though. But probably the only license that would allow that price.
My sister bought one of these for general use at my mother's house. While I hated the damn thing, and my Asus netbook smoked the thing, I can see where some people would get some use out of the gimped thing.
Can it play back HD video??? How does this stack up against one of these Nettop/small-HTPC (ION-based, etc.) units that have been flowing out lately.
Is this notebook good enough for World of Warcraft? Celeron 900 @ 2.2GHz and GMA 4500M?
Thanks for your help.
It will work fine, just keep the settings at Medium.
test
boy all of u complaining so much just make me sick!!! it's a great price for the entry level person who is just starting and not able to spend a fortune on a laptop. all of your whining comments doesn't help anybody here. it just shows the ignorance and arrogance all of u have. wouldn't it be better to help educate rather than sit on your over price laptop, etc. and complain like babies who need an adult size pacifier!!!!
Where do we get it for $348 because it is not that cheap on Walmart.com?
I apologize I found it and it is $348 and available online and in store starting 8/16/09
I got this for my dad. I'm laying on the couch typing on it now. All in all I have to say this thing is great for what you get for $350 bux, and it worked out better than the netbooks in this same price range. This thing makes an excellent kitchen pc, which is what its used for. The 17" display is plenty big for my dad to be able to read without eye strain, and in this case the less dense resolution is a plus. Its still got enough resolution that webpages shows up correctly but not so much that my dad has to squint to read everything. Plus with intel integrated graphics I'm not sure the computer could handle much more. The screen is also nice if dad wants to watch a dvd or something. The battery life is not a problem as this thing lives plugged in anyways.
There wasn't that much bloatware that I could tell. Vista basic only stayed on here long enough for me to burn a copy of windows 7 rc 64 bit, then that has been installed for that "new fresh out of the box" operating system feel. And no oem installs don't count. After the install of windows 7 this thing runs great. All in all I recommend this laptop to anyone looking to replace an old or dying internet only desktop or laptop as it is more than capable.
Thanks that was a big help I actually bought on Yesterday was able to use it out of the box no problems. !!
Got one of these yesterday and wiped Vista off with Killdisk and installed XP Pro. All drivers can be found on Toshiba's website. Works great now, all the garbage programs are gone and it will even run Solidworks... (a little slow)