Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I actually own the Satellite 1800-S207, but the only difference is that my laptop has Windows XP Professional, whereas the 1805-S207 has XP Home. Other the OS, these two notebooks are identical.I purchased this laptop (about 2 months ago) because of it's many features and the great price. I paid [$] including shipping over the internet, couldn't find a better deal for a notebook that has 14" screen, DVD/CDRW, 1.1GHz Celeron, etc. I've had no problems with full screen DVD playback when the notebook is plugged in to the AC Adapter, and on batteries I've only had a jerky picture once or twice an hour (didn't bother me at all). I've read that other users have had issues with DVD playback, but I have had no major issues and am very satisfied. The speakers surprised me with their clarity and loudness, best I've heard in a laptop. I've burned 2 CDs with no problems, the Roxio software worked perfectly and burned the CD-Rs at a fast 8x speed. The display is a very nice 14" active matrix, with great brightness and resolution. I've had one pixel go out, but it's barely noticable and I've heard it's a common thing with active screens. Everything is layed out logically, the touchpad works well and you can even use it to scroll up/down, sideways, and go back and forward pages when surfing the internet. Below the touchpad are also rewind, ff, stop and play buttons that can be used to play CD's when the laptop is off and closed. Hooking up the laptop to a TV to play DVD's is easy with the RCA out in the back, and I can close the laptop and use the above mentioned buttons during TV playback. Performance is OK, I've never owned an Intel Celeron before, but it's plenty for the majority of applications. This is NOT a gaming machine, graphic intensive games like Links at full res or Unreal will not work well on this machine. However, strategy games like The Sims or Civ3 work flawlessly. There are a couple of other minor drawbacks. I'm not too excited about the 2.5 hour battery life, but for [$] I'm willing to sacrifice that feature. It's also a bit heavy and bulky, but that doesn't bother me too much since I don't travel much and this was a desktop replacement. Another thing to mention is Toshiba Support. This is one of the major reasons I bought this laptop, because many other user comments I read about felt that Toshiba offered the best phone support. I had a minor bios issue, where after extreme extended use (like 6 straight hours of working on a grad school paper in a hot library), the bios would suddenly shut down the XP OS. I called in and the technician answered right away, we upgraded my bios and the problem was solved in 10 minutes. Haven't had this problem since then. Overall, I feel this is the best value notebook currently on the market, and with good price/performance and great tech support, I plan to stick with Toshiba for years.
Rating: 
Summary: Best value notebook, great support, very few drawbacks
Review: I actually own the Satellite 1800-S207, but the only difference is that my laptop has Windows XP Professional, whereas the 1805-S207 has XP Home. Other the OS, these two notebooks are identical. I purchased this laptop (about 2 months ago) because of it's many features and the great price. I paid [$] including shipping over the internet, couldn't find a better deal for a notebook that has 14" screen, DVD/CDRW, 1.1GHz Celeron, etc. I've had no problems with full screen DVD playback when the notebook is plugged in to the AC Adapter, and on batteries I've only had a jerky picture once or twice an hour (didn't bother me at all). I've read that other users have had issues with DVD playback, but I have had no major issues and am very satisfied. The speakers surprised me with their clarity and loudness, best I've heard in a laptop. I've burned 2 CDs with no problems, the Roxio software worked perfectly and burned the CD-Rs at a fast 8x speed. The display is a very nice 14" active matrix, with great brightness and resolution. I've had one pixel go out, but it's barely noticable and I've heard it's a common thing with active screens. Everything is layed out logically, the touchpad works well and you can even use it to scroll up/down, sideways, and go back and forward pages when surfing the internet. Below the touchpad are also rewind, ff, stop and play buttons that can be used to play CD's when the laptop is off and closed. Hooking up the laptop to a TV to play DVD's is easy with the RCA out in the back, and I can close the laptop and use the above mentioned buttons during TV playback. Performance is OK, I've never owned an Intel Celeron before, but it's plenty for the majority of applications. This is NOT a gaming machine, graphic intensive games like Links at full res or Unreal will not work well on this machine. However, strategy games like The Sims or Civ3 work flawlessly. There are a couple of other minor drawbacks. I'm not too excited about the 2.5 hour battery life, but for [$] I'm willing to sacrifice that feature. It's also a bit heavy and bulky, but that doesn't bother me too much since I don't travel much and this was a desktop replacement. Another thing to mention is Toshiba Support. This is one of the major reasons I bought this laptop, because many other user comments I read about felt that Toshiba offered the best phone support. I had a minor bios issue, where after extreme extended use (like 6 straight hours of working on a grad school paper in a hot library), the bios would suddenly shut down the XP OS. I called in and the technician answered right away, we upgraded my bios and the problem was solved in 10 minutes. Haven't had this problem since then. Overall, I feel this is the best value notebook currently on the market, and with good price/performance and great tech support, I plan to stick with Toshiba for years.
Rating:
Summary: My 1805-s207 is a lemon!!! I'll try Samsung next
Review: I always loved Toshiba products so when it came time to buy a notebook, I turned to Toshiba first. I bought the notebook in February 2002 and have had little use of it due to major problems. The first was the BIOS problem.
I downloaded the updated version and it still had problems. Each day the hard drive would display more and more serious problems until finally it quit. I sent it to Toshiba. They replaced the hard drive. This was September. Gradually, the computer began to work slower and it took 5-10 minutes to boot up!!! When I did a scan disk it could not complete the test and again I sent it to Toshiba about a week ago. They replaced the hard drive again!! I should get it back tomorrow. I really hope this solves the problem. Buy another brand if you can. 1 coworker of mine and email friend own samsung notebooks and they've had em for years with ZERO problems. I should have bought a samsung. They are the largest chip producer in the world. I am really disappointed in Toshiba.
Rating:
Summary: My 1805-s207 is a lemon!!! I'll try Samsung next
Review: I always loved Toshiba products so when it came time to buy a notebook, I turned to Toshiba first. I bought the notebook in February 2002 and have had little use of it due to major problems. The first was the BIOS problem.
I downloaded the updated version and it still had problems. Each day the hard drive would display more and more serious problems until finally it quit. I sent it to Toshiba. They replaced the hard drive. This was September. Gradually, the computer began to work slower and it took 5-10 minutes to boot up!!! When I did a scan disk it could not complete the test and again I sent it to Toshiba about a week ago. They replaced the hard drive again!! I should get it back tomorrow. I really hope this solves the problem. Buy another brand if you can. 1 coworker of mine and email friend own samsung notebooks and they've had em for years with ZERO problems. I should have bought a samsung. They are the largest chip producer in the world. I am really disappointed in Toshiba.
Rating: 
Summary: Beware of sudden shut-downs!
Review: I got this laptop for a birthday present and I have loved every moment with it. Other reviewers have covered most aspects of this computer in great detail, but I feel I must add something. This laptop shuts down suddenly while you're working on your computer, whether you're playing music, a DVD, working on a word processor, or just fooling around on chat. I've checked Toshiba's online support, and they blame the BIOS, for which they have issued a patch twice at least. I have installed the patch twice, once on Feb 20 (I checked), and once April 25. It still shuts down suddenly. I've called Toshiba Customer Support, and they suggest I take it to my local authorized dealer to have it fixed. Hopefully they can fix it, because I do love my laptop (my baby!) and it's a wonderful machine, except for this _very_ irritating (and scary--it's finals time, and I have lots of papers due) flaw. DVD playback is choppy at times (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon wasn't as fun when the fight scenes were truncated or came frame by frame) but then again, I'm not really complaining . . . yet. After all, I didn't ask for this laptop for the sole purpose of DVD playback. Everything else works fine, and I've been extolling this laptop's virtues wherever I go. I've influenced my roommate to save up over the summer for a laptop, though I suspect after hearing me yell at the computer when it shuts down for the third time in a night she won't be buying the 1805-S207. :\
Rating:
Summary: Beware of sudden shut-downs!
Review: I got this laptop for a birthday present and I have loved every moment with it. Other reviewers have covered most aspects of this computer in great detail, but I feel I must add something. This laptop shuts down suddenly while you're working on your computer, whether you're playing music, a DVD, working on a word processor, or just fooling around on chat. I've checked Toshiba's online support, and they blame the BIOS, for which they have issued a patch twice at least. I have installed the patch twice, once on Feb 20 (I checked), and once April 25. It still shuts down suddenly. I've called Toshiba Customer Support, and they suggest I take it to my local authorized dealer to have it fixed. Hopefully they can fix it, because I do love my laptop (my baby!) and it's a wonderful machine, except for this _very_ irritating (and scary--it's finals time, and I have lots of papers due) flaw. DVD playback is choppy at times (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon wasn't as fun when the fight scenes were truncated or came frame by frame) but then again, I'm not really complaining . . . yet. After all, I didn't ask for this laptop for the sole purpose of DVD playback. Everything else works fine, and I've been extolling this laptop's virtues wherever I go. I've influenced my roommate to save up over the summer for a laptop, though I suspect after hearing me yell at the computer when it shuts down for the third time in a night she won't be buying the 1805-S207. :\
Rating:
Summary: Great Price with all the features!
Review: I looked for a long time for an affordable laptop that had all the features including a CDRW drive. I finally found the 1805-S207. It was priced right in the middle of the low price notebooks. I had read some bad reviews about DVD playback, but I watched it playback a DVD in a store and it looked great. I have used this computer for many weeks now, and it does it all.As well as playing DVDs it also burns cds. I was very concerned about battery life because I travel frequently. I am very happy with the battery life.
On the highest power saving mode, the battery lasts around three hours (although the computer runs pretty slow).
When watching a dvd the battery lasts around an hour and forty minutes.I suggest getting an extra battery if you travel a lot. I did. I tested out the speakers on a lot of notebooks. The speakers on this notebook are very good. They are nice and loud. Even at the highest volume, there is very little distortion. Its has two video outputs. One is S-video, which is nice if you want to display your sceen on a tv. It comes with XP which is big improvement over other versions of Windows. The volume control is located in a nice, easy to reach, spot on the left side of the notebook. The Only thing I don't like about this computer is that the headphone jack is located on the back of the computer. But its not a big deal. Overall I think this computer does everything you need, plus more, at an affordable price.
Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I'm not sure if it because of Windows XP, but this PC runs slower than my older compter. My dial up on the internet is slower also. Ugh .. and I tried to return it after only two days and Toshiba won't take it back. I feel like they handed me the 'hot potato" and I'm stuck with it.
I will be putting it in the paper this week, and taking the loss, I'd rather just repair my old one, the one with a different brand name.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-built, poor DVD playback
Review: Normally I would wait to write a review until I have had a bit more time to evaluate the product, but the Toshiba has a glaring flaw: DVD playback is poor. I inserted Terminator 2 and the playback is annoyingly jerky. This is a shame, because otherwise the machine is built well, appearing to be a bit more sturdy than the HP ZT1130 I bought at the same time. The specs are almost the same on these two laptops with just a couple of exceptions, so I expected fairly comparable performance. Users typically don't buy a laptop for the sole purpose of playing DVD's, but if you do plan to play them the HP is a better choice for about the same money. Playback with the same DVD on the HP was very smooth. The only caveat with the HP is that it doesn't come with a floppy drive--you must shell out another $40 for a USB floppy.
Rating:
Summary: Good Value Multimedia PC for Windows
Review: SUMMARY: A good value laptop for general PC use, with only a few minor problems that should not affect most users. This machine is noticeably faster than my PIII-450 Desktop machine when working on computation-intensive tasks, for example Seti at Home, compressing large files, etc. The graphics and the display look great, but be warned that this is not the best machine available for graphics-intensive games. For example, Ghost Recon was almost unplayable on this machine. These types of games might benefit from tweaking performance settings in-game. But games that run just fine on my Diamond Viper V770 on my desktop machine are slow and jerky on this laptop. But for me, this is not a real drawback, since game-playing is not one of the main reasons I bought this machine. This laptop has a dual-purpose DVD/CD-RW drive, a newer type of drive that may give some applications trouble. You can play DVDs on this box, and you can burn your own CDs. You cannot burn DVDs, and DVD playback will have a little bit of lag when played full-screen. Resizing the screen just a little smaller than full-screen size allowed me to watch the DVD without any freeze-frame lag, and the picture is very nice and perfectly watchable at that size. One of the main things I wanted to do with this laptop was install PartitionMagic so that I could dual-boot to either Windows XP or RedHat Linux. After spending almost a week struggling to get this to work, I am giving up. This is new hardware (which frequently presents problems with trying non-standard configurations, at least initially), and although I am disappointed, I am not surprised that I have had so much trouble with this. RedHat installed just fine, but PowerQuest's BootMagic program is unable to properly deal with this harddrive, perhaps because this is a newer type of drive, even after having PowerQuest technical support provide me with an edited MBR to install. If you want to run one OS only (XP only or Linux only, for example) this machine will probably work just fine for you. RedHat seemed to install OK, but because of the uncertainties regarding the dual-boot issue, I didn't bother to try to track down the troubles I had getting X to work and getting modprobe to recognize eth0. These may be kernel related issues-I was installing RedHat 7.1, vmlinuz 2.4.2-12, and newer kernels which are available now might not have these problems. The Roxio EZ CD Creator software that came with Windows XP on the laptop was unable to control the CD burner. Again, this is apparently a problem of the hardware being newer than the available drivers. Toshiba technical support was helpful, and I didn't have to sit on hold paying $30 per call like I have had to with Micro$oft, Compaq and other vendors and end up without a solution that works. Instead, in less than an hour I had my solution. Just reinstall the Roxio EZ CD Creator software from the install CD included in the box the laptop came in. On the other hand, be aware that Nero and Windows Media player were both unable to burn CDs. There may be a fix for this soon, but as of now it does not work. Straight out of the box, I was very pleased with this machine. I had not used XP before, and find the improvement over Windows98 to be analogous to the improvements of Windows98 over Windows95. I resisted upgrading from Win95 to 98, but when I finally did, I was pleased with the improvements, both to user-interface issues and to functionality. One example is that XP now provides an NT-like performance/process management interface when you press CTRL-ALT-DEL which to me is a huge improvement over Win98. XP seems to understand the concept that a household might have more than one computer (unlike Windows98), and many aspects of system management are much more sensible and useful than in previous versions of Windows. XP also seems much more stable than Win98: in several weeks of use, I have not had to reboot once due to an application or OS crash or hang. The only reboots that have been necessary have been when installing some programs that require it. The touchpad for cursor control works very well, but I prefer using a mouse. I plugged in a spare PS/2 mouse I had laying around and it worked instantly--no "please put the Windows XP install CD-ROM in the drive" or rebooting! The laptop has an RCA type jack for output to an external monitor. This laptop features both an RJ-12 56Kb modem port and an RJ-45 10/100Mb ethernet adapter. There's two USB ports which seem to work just fine, and an IR port. A SERIOUS OMISSION BY TOSHIBA IS THAT THEY DID NOT INCLUDE THE STANDARD WINDOWS BACKUP UTILITY PROGRAM. This is a very serious issue with a laptop. Most people NEED to be able to backup the data on their laptop. Toshiba: include Backup on every PC you sell!!! ...Although I'm disappointed that I cannot yet get RedHat to coexist peacefully with XP on the hard disk (a failure not on the part of Toshiba, but rather of the PowerQuest BootMagic software), I am very happy with this machine so far...I would recommend this laptop as a top-three contender with any other laptop in it's price range.
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