Great TV for the price, September 13, 2011

By 

W. Weigel – See all my reviews

  

I bought this Toshiba to replace the 32″ TCL LCD in my bedroom – gave the TCL to my son. Just got this TV yesterday and I wanted to give my first impressions and address some of the concerns listed in other reviews, both here and on other sites. The three main criticisms of this TV were:

1. Only two HDMI ports – I only needed one or two ports anyway, so this did not bother me. If you are purchasing this as your main unit, you need to weigh this considerably. There are ways around it, such as a receiver with HDMI-in ports or an HDMI switch, but unless you own these already, it’s money you could spend on a bigger TV.

2. Sound – OK, the sound on this is not great, but it is not as bad as some people are making it out to be. I would say it is about average for TV’s of this size and level (I install TV’s in clients’ conference rooms from time to time). I was really expecting it to be bad after some of the reviews, so when it pretty much sounded on par with my 32″ TCL, it kind of made me laugh. I was also able to change the Dolby settings (Compressed or Normal – you have to decide what you like better) to improve the sound. What critics probably dislike is the lack of bass. There is pretty much no bass, but I feel the same way about every other TV of this size I have heard. It does not have RCA or analog out, so you cannot install computer speakers, like some reviewers have complained about. It does have an optical out, which is better because it is feature-forward. I have a Panasonic soundbar already, so I plugged the TV optical out into my soundbar and everything sounded great. I would never spend the money on a TV of this size and use the built-in speakers. At the very least, go with a sound bar. Panasonic makes a very good one and Vizio has one for under 0 on Amazon. My Panasonic is perfect for the bedroom – shows and movies are immersive and the voices are crystal clear. If you want a nice sound system with full bass and don’t want to run wires or buy a receiver, get the Panasonic soundbar with the subwoofer. If you just want to significantly improve the sound of the TV, you can buy the soundbar with no subwoofer. It will do nicely (I do not have the subwoofer).

3. Weak HD tuner – I have no idea what the critical reviewers are talking about. This TV picked up every QAM channel, including unencrypted digital, that my cable company provides. What this means is that I hooked the TV straight to my cable line and it picked up all of the local digital HD stations, the music stations, and cable analog stations. It performed as well as my other TV’s with no problem. I then hooked up my indoor HD antenna and it picked up 38 stations, including every Milwaukee HD channel and some from Chicago. I live almost 50 miles from Milwaukee and 70 miles from Chicago. It worked as well or better than my other TV’s. To put this in context, if I look up on the web what channels I am supposed to receive for my location, it lists 25 stations. I get 38. The TV also has a nice feature that shows how strong the signal is when you pull up a channel.

All in all, the Toshiba is a great TV for the money, especially at 9.98. The picture quality is excellent and the screen has a nice matte finish, so there are no reflections. It is a 60Hz TV, so there will probably be some artifacting during Bluray movie action sequences, but that is to be expected.

It was easy to set up and does everything I ask from a TV of this class.

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Great purchase thus far, August 20, 2011

By 

Paul M. Murphy – See all my reviews

  

This is my first HD television although I’ve had experience working with them due to my job as a computer tech. The picture quality on this TV is on par with the better screens I’ve seen. When a BR disk is playing (connected with HDMI) it’s astounding. The sound on the unit goes very high without the vibration I’ve heard other TVs produce at higher volumes. The high notes are a bit sharp on the unit at higher volumes and the only reason I gave it a 4 star on sound quality.

Setup was simple…snap together some plastic for the base and plug it in.

I’ve not used the unit with any other devices outside of my BR player. I’ve used Vudu, Netflix, normal DVDs and Blueray and all look great. Even the standard definition DVD and Netflix feeds look sharp.

If you’re wanting a TV that’s simple to use without any fuss or tweaking with settings or configurations this one is perfect as that’s what I was looking for in a TV.

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Just what I wanted, October 1, 2011

After a long time waiting and searching and waiting I finally pulled the trigger on this TV. The sound is pretty poor as other reviewers have stated but I run our sound through the stereo system so it didn’t really matter. Picture is very good, especially for the price. Good contrast and not a lot of fade when viewing from the side. If I used the sound I would likely have considered sending it back. But it’s the perfect TV for what we use it for.

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Most value packed Apple, November 3, 2003

By 

NutMac “NutMac” (Mountain View, CA) – See all my reviews

  

Let us raise the glass: long live the G3 processor, for it is dead. Apple’s iBook was the last holdout to G4 processor. It is G3 no more.

Despite some rumors, iBook’s G4 processor is a true G4 processor with Altivec fully on-board. While it runs slower (800 MHz vs. 1 GHz) and features smaller L2 cache (256 KB vs. 512 KB) than 12″ PowerBook, it comes remarkable close in most performance parameters. They share the same 133 MHz front-side bus and PC2100 (266 MHz) DDR SDRAM.

Even their feature sets come remarkably close. Both sport sharp 12.1″ 1024-by-768 LCD, 256 MB memory and 32 MB graphics memory, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ports, and 100/10 fast Ethernet. Both lack the PC Card (PCMCIA) slot but can accommodate AirPort Extreme wireless network.

Other than faster G4 processor, just about the only reasons to consider 12″ PowerBook are:
- Larger memory capacity on the PowerBook (1.25 GB vs. 640 MB)
- Larger hard disk (40 GB vs. 30 GB)
- PowerBook can drive an external display (dual display) up to 2048-by-1536 via DVI port; iBook can only mirror up to 1024-by-768 via VGA port
- SuperDrive (DVD burner) is optional on PowerBook; it is not available on iBook
- Bluetooth is standard on PowerBook; it is optional (built-to-order) on iBook
- Marginally faster GeForce FX 5200 graphics card on PowerBook (vs. Radeon 9200 on iBook)
- PowerBook is slightly lighter (4.6 lbs vs. 4.9 lbs) and slightly smaller (10.9-by-8.6-by-1.18 inches vs. 11.2-by-9.1-by-1.35 inches)
- You like the PowerBook’s anodized aluminum allow chassis better

There are sufficient reasons to get the iBook instead:
- Costs almost 50% less
- It is not dramatically slower
- Longer battery life (up to 6 hours vs. 5 hours)
- Polycarbonate plastic chassis is more scratch proof and offer better wireless network (AirPort Extreme) reception

How is the iBook in itself? For a little over a grand, you get a beautifully designed notebook (similar to iPod) packed with features: combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, optional 802.11g AirPort Extreme wireless network, beautiful LCD, sensible keyboard layout, snappy performance under included Mac OS X Panther 10.3 — all in very portable form factor. This little book represents a serious bang for the buck.

Pros:
- Very high bang for the buck: good performance and high in features
- Looks beautiful
- Includes almost everything an average computer user needs
- Very portable and durable
- Fantastic wireless reception

Cons:
- Cannot drive external display higher than 1024-by-768 resolution
- To get built-in Bluetooth, you must order from Apple (built-to-order option) — unlike the AirPort Extreme, you cannot add it later on
- Standard 256 MB memory is based on two 128 MB RAM modules. To add more memory later on, you will need to toss out one of the memory modules (the other memory module is soldered onto the motherboard)

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Solid, Fast & Stylish, December 19, 2003

I just recently purchased an ibook G4 coming from a 2.4GHz pentium 4 desktop at work. I decided on the ibook because I wanted something small, reasonably priced, with a high level of quality for my home/sometimes work use. I had a chance to take a good look at Dell laptops that were recently purchased at my work and was not very impressed with the solidity of the small, lightweight laptops. They have also had their share software glitches which did not impress me and needed external CD/DVD drives. I’ll tell you, it was a bit scary to move to the Apple machine, but so far it has been a happy marriage. This machine says quality. For the applications I use (spreadsheets, word processors, net, games…) you cannot tell there is a speed difference between the P4 desktop. This comuter is plenty fast. Surfing the net (unlike other reviews) is a breeze and is as fast as the desktop through the cable or T1 connection I use. The things I like are the size, speed, keyboard, battery life, stability, feel, as well as the looks. I also can access our Windows based network to retreive e-mails, etc. without any problem. Apparently the Panther 10.3 OS provides superior security when surfing which is nice, since I do a lot of shopping over the net. This was a concern I had with the latest Windows OS. Also, some people have commented that the white keyboard can get dirty fast. I have not experienced this problem yet (washed hands?), but when shopping for a computer, I actually looked for a light colored/white keyboard so I could tell when the keyboard is dirty. Who knows what sort of junk is on a black keyboard! In any case, the keyboard pops out and is easy to clean.

In summary, this is a well enginerred, quality laptop that will allow you to interface with your Windows work environment. Nice work.

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Pretty Darn Impressive (Updated), November 9, 2003

From 5/03 to 11/03 I owned a 14.1″ G3 iBook. That was a nice laptop but certainly had some annoying quirks and was really out-of-date (described later). I also wanted to get a smaller laptop and also get Panther. So “upgrading” or “downgrading” to this 12″ G4 iBook made a whole lot of sense for me. Here is my review based on comparison to the old G3 iBook.

Performance: From G3 900Mhz to G4 800Mhz is certainly an upgrade. As the G4 features a faster 133Mhz Bus (formerly 100Mhz Bus) and also supports DDR Memory (compared to the old PC100). Applications seem to fire up and run better and everything is just snappier. Also if you have altivec enabled applications, G4 is certainly the way to go.

Technical Improvements: USB 1.1 ==> USB 2.0, Airport 802.11b ==> Airport Extreme 802.11g, updated graphics card, tray loading combo drive ==> slot loading combo drive.

Other Improvements: Panther is a more polished and refined OS compared to Jaguar. OS X has finally matured. The keyboard on the G4 iBook has been improved…buttons press smoother and keyboard has less flex (not to mention the greyish tone makes it look better). Also the LCD display seems a little bit more crisper.

All in all I’d highly recommend this 12″ G4 iBook. For this price, it is a tremendous value. You cannot find a comparable 12.1″ laptop in the PC world (w/o spending nearly 2 Grand, and most don’t come with an optical drive built-in).

I don’t see much of a reason to go with 14.1″ as it has the same resolution as the 12″ (unless that you have bad vision). If you want a laptop with a big display, go with the 15.2″ Powerbook (probably the best all-around laptop in the world). If you want a small but still very fast laptop that you can carry everywhere, GET THIS IBOOK! It certainly has the looks and now is a speedster with G4. Can’t go WRONG.

(Added 1/11) For the past 3 months I have yet to experience a crash or problem with this iBook. Past generations of iBooks were prone to logic board failures, it seems like Apple finally got it fixed. I can put this laptop asleep for a week and wake it up, and be ready for use within 10 seconds. This is a sweet laptop, and it’s coming from a lifelong Windows user (who still uses Windows too).

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Great picture, average sound, March 5, 2012

I needed a smaller tv for my bedroom. This seemed to be the perfect size (23″). The picture is great…crisp and clear. The sound could use some work. Sounds “tinny” like it’s coming from a soup can even after adjusting the treble/bass, etc. Otherwise it meets my needs as a tv I use occasionally. The manufacturer should improve on the sound..I would then give it 5 stars.

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Excellent for the price point!, March 20, 2012

This is a great little all-in one TV. Plays DVDs, audio CDs, and music, movie, and picture files from either a memory card (slot) or memory stick (USB), and is PC hook-up ready to boot! I put 118 Mickey Mouse cartoons on an 8 gig card and they played just fine. When the TV isn’t being watched, I have another card that I loaded up with family photo (jpegs) and use it as a digital picture frame. There’s nothing I’ve tried that hasn’t worked on this TV. As far as the other reviewers who complained about the speaker sound quality; what manufacturer is going to put high end speakers on a 0 TV? None! Page ONE of the instruction manual reads… “Superior Sound – Built-in Dolby Digital decoder to output high quality sound effects.” The key word here is OUTPUT. They expect you to hook up external sound. I put 75 watt 2.1 computer speakers on this TV and found it to be true. The sound IS awesome, with the right OUTPUT. I have thumping bass and high trebles from my 3 piece speaker system. For it’s low low price, I think this TV is a steal. I’d buy it again in a heart beat! Love it, and everything it’s capable of doing!

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Coby TFDVD2395 23-Inch 1080p TV Combo, November 3, 2011

By 

D. Liu – See all my reviews

  

The TV has very good picture quality; the integrated DVD player works fine, so does the USB port that reads JPG and AVI files.

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Good Product, October 28, 2011

Good product overall. Definitely a good option, to the + cases you find at a retailer. The cons I found were, the side entry for the iPad as a small flap that goes under the iPad, and it could make it bulky for the case to close completely,…no biggie really. The one part I did not like very much is the access to the top and side controls (power&volume), its not what you call easy access, even though, it has openings for said controls, you still have to make your way in there a little bit,….but all outputs have there designated openings. The Cameras on both sides have the opening, however, I did notice the front camera is not really centered to the opening, so it can easy be covered by the case if you move the iPad too much,…with that said, the case does control the iPad inside fairly secure.

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Good quality. Easy to use, October 14, 2011

Been using this for a week. I compare it to the version you can buy at the Apple store but it’s under . It even magnetically shuts just like the Apple one. Totally worth the money. Buy it.

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Simple, cheap, effective, March 7, 2012

By 

T. Nash (CO, USA) – See all my reviews

  

After three weeks using this case with the iPad2:
This is a perfect starter case, particularly if you are gifting or new to the iPad experience and don’t yet know what features you’ll really want in a case. It protects the iPad2 and allows for portable, versatile use.

NOTE: I have sensitivity to off-gasses. After opening, I had to place this case in another room to air out for a full day before I could use it comfortably. By the third day, the issue was completely resolved.

PROS:
- It stands well, for viewing videos and slide shows. (Vertical landscape)
- The slight angle it provides by laying it horizontally (landscape) works surprisingly well for typing and swiping.
- It does not stand hands-free in portrait, but it is still lightweight enough to hold in one hand while swiping and tapping.
- The magnet in the cover works to sleep the iPad2 , as advertised.
- Protective and discreet (looks more like a notebook than an iPad)

CONS:
- No portrait stand (I’ve missed it only a little)
- The simple tab in the back used to ‘create’ the stand will start to stretch out over time and create a less secure ability to prop the iPad2 for typing (though it should have no effect on standing it for viewing purposes). If you have a little velcro tab (office supplies), you can correct this easily.

I love this case. As I use my new iPad more and more, I’ll have a better idea of the features I’ll really want in a case — and I fully expect to upgrade. But I don’t feel the need to hurry. In the meantime, this case covers most of my needs and is inexpensive enough that I won’t feel wasteful when I move on.

I paired the case purchase with screen protectors and a stylus, both of which are working well for me so far. (Screen protectors are tricky to put on – read the reviews for tips.) The stylus clips easily over the edges of this case; like a pen to a notebook.

Screen Protector:
myGear Products LifeGuard and SunBlock Screen Protector Films for Apple iPad 2 2nd Generation – (4-Pack) 2 Clear and 2 Anti-Glare

Stylus:
Kensington 2nd Generation Apple iPad 1 and 2 / iPhone / iPod / Motorola Xoom Tablet / Galaxy / Blackberry Playbook Virtuoso Touch Screen Stylus and Pen (White) Newest Model

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Excellent inexpensive computer, May 6, 2011

By 

Richard Hausman (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) – See all my reviews

  

This computer does everything I need–surf the web, write E-mails, watch movies, create backup DVDs of data, and synchronize with my smartphone. The keyboard is great, screen is good and overall quality is very good.

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pretty little laptop, November 2, 2010

The item arrived super-fast, so I have no quarrels with that. However, the laptop was in worse condition than described by the seller: on the outside everything was nice and shiny, but I guess nobody bothered to dust the inside of the poor thing. It took me about 20 minute and two cans of compressed air to make it look “normal”; the laptop came with a few missing screws, so I had to buy those as well; it coms with Windows XP Pro, SP1, so you’ll need to do ALL the updates in the past 5 years. Loads of fun…
All in all, the laptop runs great (once cleaned) and it was definitely worth its price.

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Great computer, December 16, 2010

Data sales co. is great. They are very helpful and sell quality computers. They are wiling to answer your questions if you will e-mail them. The computer was received in new condition. Everything worked well. I am very pleased with this purchase.
I did upgrade the memory and replaced the hard drive although they were in good working order. The 2668 is capable of running video for presenations with a good video output with memory. It is a very nice computer. Light and easy to use.
Getting ready to upgrade to Windows 7!

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UPDATED: great for a bargain-priced solution, November 30, 2011

By 

K. Moynehan – See all my reviews

  

If you find this helpful, please add your vote!

I originally bought the 9 Haier 32-inch Haier L32D1120 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV, Black looking for a low-priced option. That TV was actually very good, but had a critical flaw for my purpose: I need to use it with headphones to avoid waking the baby in the next room, and the Haier’s speakers don’t turn off when the headphones are connected. Amazon’s easy returns process put me back in the market for a new set, so I pounced on this Sharp when it was more.

I expected a better picture, better connectivity, and a few more features given the brand and higher price. However, I also knew that in a sub-0 720p set, I couldn’t expect to be blown away.

All in all, I’m satisfied, but teetering on the edge of returning it, because I really am pretty underwhelmed with the picture quality. I have two other TVs – a 55-inch Panasonic Viera Plasma hooked up via HDMI, and a 46-inch Samsung 1080p LCD hooked up via coaxial cable to a remote Dish box. I hooked up this Sharp via the same coax setup, so my expectations were for a good SD picture, which I know to be far below a true HD signal on a good screen. Here is the rundown:

PROS:
Price
Connectivity more than adequate – although I only need coax right now, I can foresee using this in a more complex setup in the future
Inputs are on the rear with a few on the side (Haier put them all on the bottom, which made no sense)
Intuitive menu and easy setup
Assembly onto the stand (and disassembly from it) was far easier than my samsung, whose engineers decided to bury the screws in deep caves on the rear housing
Speakers turn off when headphones are connected (and there’s a separate option for disabling it permanently if you’d like, which I would recommend if you use it with an A/V receiver)
Easily wall-mountable (I recommend monoprice mounts for great value)

CONS:
underwhelming picture – I tried to optimize picture settings, but it still is nowhere near the SD quality of my Samsung, even allowing some benefit of the doubt on the size and price difference. It’s not bad enough that I think I have a defective unit, but just bad enough to irk me.
TV does not swivel on the stand – head-scratching omission there by Sharp, but still no big deal
Menu – takes up 85% of the screen, right in the center. And unlike on Samsung, there is no way to move it, or make it translucent. That makes it tricky to adjust video settings while trying to see the effect of your changes

So although I know I’m comparing two high-end 1080p sets to a budget 720p, I do have a pretty close comparison with two sets receiving the same standard definition signal. I will keep it because it’s not a terrible picture, but it will probably bug me for a while. If I were to do it over, I’d probably wait for another lightning deal (or the more rare Vizio deal on woot).

UPDATE:
I suffered through 20 minutes of making small adjustments, then exiting out of the menu so I could see the effect, and repeating this process. I was able to get some adjustments done while pausing the show when a face, some colorful item, and some black areas were at the edge of the screen (so I could see something meaningful while the menu blocked the rest of the screen). I now have better skin tones and a less hazy picture. Still not quite the samsung standard def picture, but it’s not supposed to be at this price. I’m now totally satisfied at the price I paid. The product itself is a four-star product, but offers five-star value at 0. I now recommend it.

UPDATE:
In response to a request, here are my settings. Your results will vary based on ambient lighting, preferences, etc, but these work for me.
Backlight 67
Brightness 45
Contrast 49
Saturation 71
Hue -1
Sharpness 13
Color Temp:
R 125
G 127
B 125

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Great HD TV, great price. I dont know why a few people complained about this TV, November 24, 2011

I bought this TV on a 24 hour sale, fast free delivery, TV looks great, sounds great, works great. Originally hooked it up to my FIOS with the coax cable until I got my HDMI cables. The picture is very good, better than I expected, and better than many other HD TVs I checked out. When I hooked up the HDMI cable and finally figured out the last settings I was amazed by the picture and sound. I can only imagine that the few who complained about picture quality have something set very wrong. Im impressed, as long as the quality and function are long tived I will keep this TV for a long time. The picture image is very sharp, not cloudy or muddy as a few have said (unless they have bad examples).

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I agree with JAS! Well done! Great picture… now., January 5, 2012

By 

Dane Shepherd (Gulf Coast, Florida) – See all my reviews

  

I bought this set recently on a Lightning Deal (though it wasn’t THAT deeply discounted). Upon receiving it I was as disappointed as most people reviewing it here and was on the fence about returning it. Colors were unspectacular and washed out. Brightness, even in a dark room, (and here’s the key) was bland and unimpressive.

After fooling with settings for about 10 minutes I stumbled upon the “Ambient Light Sensor” option, which dynamically dims and brightens the display based upon the the brightness of your environment (see how my dark room actually messed me up?).

After disabling this “feature” I was was nearly as impressed with the contrast, brightness, and colors as my 46″ Sharp Aquos, 40″ Bravia, and 26″ Samsung ToC. It is a VERY nice set, with excellent picture, adequate volume and a very reasonable price point. (Yes; “nearly”. C’mon, my Aquos was SEVEN TIMES the price at that time.)

I am a bit of a electronics-snob, and I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone looking for an affordable 32″ who does not require LED backlighting, or integrated “apps”.

P.S. Looks AMAZING paired with a PS3 through HDMI!

Side note: I understand that all of these electronics manufacturers are competing to be the most “Green”, or “Environment Friendly”. Everyone wants that yellow sticker on their product that claims “Only costs .25 cents a year to operate! *under factory settings). But shipping these things in such a diminished state is probably counter-productive since it is more impactful on the environment to have them shipped back to Amazon in large brown trucks, IMHO. ~ Daneshep

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Toshiba makes great laptops, you will not be disappointed., December 14, 2011

I’ve had this laptop for almost a month now. So far I’m very pleased with it. I use this laptop mainly for everything a college kid does, as well as development software like Netbeans, Adobe, Eclipse, AutoCAD, etc. I’m also a casual gamer.

Pros: This thing is a beast, incredible performance and speed. I can have something Dreamweaver and Eclipse open at the same time, while watching a video or gaming and you barely notice a difference. the 2nd generation Intel Core i7 2670QM, aka Sandy Bridge, has a great benchmark. It can overclock to over 3.0 Ghz via Turbo Boost when needed. It has a lot of RAM, 6GB is more than enough, and you probably will never use all of it. For the average person, 4GB is more than sufficient. Starcraft II ran just fine on it, even without discrete Graphics Memory. Of course, for the hardcore gamers, it will be best to get a model with NVIDIA Geforce.

750GB is a ton, even more than my external hard drive. Many people don’t understand that when you buy, say a 750GB hard drive, you do not get 320GB of space. No, you have not been lied to. Manufacturers use decimal notation (320GB = 3.2 billion)but computers read binary, so it’s really closer to 690GB. You always get slightly less than what the manufacturer says, I believe it’s around 5% less than what is advertised, so this one holds about 692gb. It’s roughly 692GB usable, and more closer to 650GB with all the Toshiba Bloatware. But still, The average person won’t ever have to worry about running out of space on this laptop.

The screen looks great. It’s a glossy LED-backlit LCD screen. The resolution isn’t super high, but this isn’t a 00 laptop. It’s 1366 x 768, and that’s perfect for anyone really. This doesn’t bug me at all, as you can’t even tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on a screen size like this. But if you really are obsessed with screen resolution, be prepared to spend close to 00.

There are dedicated hotkeys up by the screen, next to the power button. The Eco button, the wireless button, LED Light Controller, Play/Pause(music), mute, and volume. Very cool and useful.

It does everything that I need without ever having problems. This machine feels cool to the touch, doesn’t overheat, even while having Adobe Dreamweaver open and watching a DVD movie at the same time doesn’t make it hot. After running for around 4-6 hours, the bottom was still fairly cool. Keyboard is fairly good. Not the best laptop keyboard ever, but I tend to have low expectations for laptop keyboards. This is not a 00 laptop, btw.

The battery life is fairly good for a machine this size. Usually it’s 3 hours, but I can get 4+ hours in Eco Mode(Plus the Environment). However, in Eco-Mode, I noticed that the computer was significantly slower once I was running multiple applications. The Eco-mode does reduce performance, but prolongs battery life, so that’s a trade off.

This laptop also has sleep/music and one USB 3.0 port that does sleep and charge. I never use the sleep/music function, but what it does is that you can plug in a headphone jack from an mp3 player and play it through the computer’s speakers even when it’s shut down. I don’t see the point in that, as I could just fire up iTunes when it’s on and do that. But pretty cool regardless. Sleep and Charge allows you to charge your portable device(Phone, iPod) via USB 3.0 even when it’s powered off, as long as the laptop has a certain amount of battery life. That could come in handy when you are outside traveling and away from a power source. Keep in mind that this feature doesn’t work on the other three USB 2.0 ports.

The speakers are amazing, they’re harman/kardon. It sounds great, and gives you a mini-theater feeling. It was a lot better than my old computer, I noticed a significant difference. Built in Mic is loud and clear.

I really like the touchpad. It works well, however multi-touch scrolling is not enabled out of the box. You might have to download & install a touchpad driver from Toshiba(search). Then you have to go to the Control Panel, Mouse, Sypnatics, and enable to multi-touch scrolling gesture. You can enable others as well, but the scrolling is the only one I ever use.

The whole laptop design is beautiful and elegant. That design really stops fingerprint smudges, and just looks really cool in general.

Not much cons here, but Cons:
The Webcam. The webcam isn’t the best, I believe it’s VGA. It’s not that bad, just not the best. I don’t notice much difference at all between this and a 1.3 MP webcam. How many laptops actually have HD webcams built-in? I don’t really video call that often, no this is a non-issue to me. You can always buy an external HD webcam.

Some people might think the material feels cheap and plasticity, and would prefer a different material instead. But personally I think it’s fine the way it is.

Toshiba…

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Awesome Size and Performance, November 7, 2011

By 

D. Dizmang (USA) – See all my reviews

  

Wow. I chose this computer over many others (being a prior Toshiba user swayed my judgement just a bit) because it was reasonably priced and has many features I was looking for. Memory speed was something I would not compromise on, 6 GB is working for me. I have had this out of the box for less than 6 hours and have been AMAZED at the quality. Ohh and on a slightly more personal note.. I have to re-train myself to use the 10-key again!! The case of the computer has an interesting finish on it, textured, not smooth. Enjoy.

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A GREAT product! HAPPY!, December 30, 2011

I have an old Toshiba with a dual core AMD turion processor and to tell you the truth, afternearly 4 years of abuse it still works fine. But I needed something more. I am a movie poster on sites like youtube and I do digital artwork. I needed to get a faster, more reliable computer and this one absolutely FLIES CIRCLES around my older model! I tell everyone that an i7 quadcore processor is no joke! On my old computer, it would rip a movie at about 20fps. This one? An AMAZING 155fps! Just unbelieveable! The 8gb of DDR3 ram is no joke either! And with the new usb 3.0 I can load a 2TB portable drive in a matter of about 10 minutes!

This computer is so FAST it’s IRRITATING! Let me explain. On my older model, I’d click on a program and it would take about 20seconds to load. This one? I can load several programs in a few seconds!

One thing that’s a bit strange. The entire laptop has an odd texture. It’s a bunch of bumpy straight lines from left to right…sorta like the peel out markings of a tire, lol.

That being said, I am giving this a 5* rating simply because 10 or higher isn’t an option!

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Awesome, April 23, 2010

I did a lot of research for TV’s in this price range. I’ve bought a few plasmas and LCD’s previously, and this TV blows them all away. This is a great price point, size and brand name TV. You can’t go wrong really, you will most certainly be satisfied. The 120hz setting on Clear works best, otherwise gives your TV content a weird soap opera look, so either set it to Clear or turn it off. This LCD works great with a PS3 also, and supports 1080p/24hz resolution, so when you watch blurays, the picture is crystal clear. If you experience any input lag when playing games (delay from button press to action on screen), try setting the source name of your PS3 to PC, it seems to fix that issue pretty well.
The sound on this TV is very robust and clear, although when watching blurays I have to turn it up to hear dialogs, which then makes action sequences really loud, but it’s not a big deal.
The design of this TV is just awesome. It has the glass bezel and gloss table top, definitely one of the best looking TV’s that I’ve ever seen. The stand also swivels, which is something every TV should have, but usually don’t.
The remote works well, and is very sturdy. The onscreen menus are very clear and even provide descriptions to most of the settings so you don’t need to try and figure out what certain settings do.
Its a pretty thin and light panel too, so if your mounting it, it should stay pretty flat on the wall.
I’ve got nothing but positives to say about this set, its worth every penny, and I’m usually very critical about electronics, but I’d recommend this LCD to anyone. It doesn’t look that great out of the box, but after a week of playing with the color settings, I think the picture has been perfected.

UPDATE
Here are my picture settings for anyone that needs a little help getting started
Mode: Standard
Backlight: 14
Contrast: 80
Brightness: 40
Sharpness: 20
Color: 51
Tint: G48/R52
Eco Solution: all off
Edge Enhancement: off
Digital Noise Filter: Low (though I’m sure auto is about the same)
MPEG Noise: Low
Color Tone: Normal (some people seem to like the Warm settings)
Auto Motion Plus 120HZ: Off (I didn’t really like this feature)

If you have any adjustments to these, let me know

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Time for an upgrade!, March 24, 2010

By 

Paul Pacis (SoCal) – See all my reviews

  

I have literally been following the prices of HDTV’s for about a year now, and there is no better time for an upgrade! Samsung just released their new “C” series, and somehow they are remarkably less expensive than their pre-existing models! The majority of the websites are selling this HDTV for 0+, Amazon’s lower-than-low price is less than the rest of the market. I purchased it here on Amazon, and received my HDTV in 5 days (could have been 4 days, but I had school all day). CEVA did the shipping for my HDTV, which I was wary at first because I have only dealt with UPS and Fedex. However, CEVA provided excellent customer service as they did contact me and I verbally specified a delivery time. Packaging was very efficient, and surprisingly light too!

For those who prefer using TV stands, you do have to assemble it on your own. Extremely easy to assemble though! All it took was 9 screws (already in the box) and I recommend using a power-screwdriver. Directions said it required two people, I did it solo! I was just eager to hook up my PS3 via HDMI cable and experience the wonderful world of 1080P.

Okay, now for the specifics and why this HDTV deserves a spot in your living room – As I mentioned before, right up to my purchase I extensively followed the quality and price of several HDTVs. The Samsungs 530, 550, 630, 650. The Samsung 630 is the best deal for your money, here’s why: The 5 series is less expensive, but only offers refresh times of 60Hz as compared to the 630 which is 120Hz. This is a big difference, and means that your HDTV with 120Hz displays at least twice as many frames-per-second which makes movies, not only sports, very fluid and more realistic. Another difference is the response time, where as the 5 series has a 6ms response time, the 6 series has a 4ms response time. And if you are a gamer, a difference of 2ms can make a big difference. So why the Samsung 630 and not the 650? The only difference now is the contrast ratio. The 630 comes with a 80,000:1 contrast ratio which in my opinion, still creates an extraordinary depth to the display. TV contrast ratio’s are starting to become stable around the 70,000 – 100,000 range (or much higher for LEDs). Whereas, 3 years ago the highest was around 10,000 but kept constantly rising. So this HDTV is very much future proof. Yes, the 650 has a higher contrast ratio, but is it worth the extra 0 something dollars?

All in all, if you’re not worried about price, go all out and purchase a LED HDTV. But if you want to shop smart, this HDTV is the way to go.

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Pray that it doesn’t break……, July 26, 2010

Up until two weeks ago, I loved this TV. I upgraded from a 32 inch non-HD/non-flat screen TV. The picture quality is wonderful, the sound was really good, but I hooked it up to a Yamaha receiver anyway.

Here’s what happened. A little over two weeks ago we had been watching the TV, and then left to go outside to do some yard work. After dinner we decided to watch a movie so I turned on the TV. Nothing. Usually when a Samsung TV is off, there is a small red light. When you turn it on, the picture emerges and the little red light goes off. No red light. I unplugged the TV from the power supply and plugged it directly into an outlet (the DVD was on the same power strip and was working). Then I took the power cord off and went into the kitchen and plugged it into the little Samsung TV in there. Worked great. Dang. I pulled out the TV information and the TV was still under warranty. I called Samsung.

After just a few seconds on hold a real person answered and I explained the dead power supply problem. She told me somebody would call me in three to five working days to arrange for the repair. WHAT? Three to five days just to talk to somebody to schedule a repair???? NINE days later somebody finally called and said that my ‘ticket’ would be sent to troubleshooting. WHAT? After nine days, still no appointment for repair???? On day twelve I got a call from a repair guy from a local business contracted to do the repair, and he asked me if the part, the power supply, had come yet. WHAT? What part? I called Samsung again and they gave me the number of GURU, the company they contract to do their repairs, and the company that subcontracts to other local repair services. I now realize that I’m twice-removed from Samsung and NOBODY is coordinating this repair but ME.

I call GURU again after two weeks, and the part has not yet been ordered!!!!! Two weeks after my initial call and the part isn’t ordered yet???? WHY NOT? Nobody knew why it wasn’t ordered by GURU so they immediately blamed Samsung. Now I’m thinking Samsung is stalling until the warranty runs out, which will happen in about two weeks. Why in the world would there have to be so many layers of uncoordinated mayhem to do a simple swap of a power supply? I’m guessing sometime within the next month or two somebody will fix this TV, and I’m guessing it will be about a 15 minute job.

When the TV worked we loved it. The picture quality was great and the sound was pretty good as well. It has nice features that were pretty easy to figure out and setup. However, would I buy another one? Probably not.

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GREAT for what I need, February 22, 2012

I saw some of the reviews on here and thought I would add my 2 cents. I bought this computer at Office Depot for 350 dollars (sorry amazon … love your prices usually but not this time) For the price and specs this is an excellent computer. If you are looking for a computer that does more than surf the web and homework this is NOT the computer for you so dont leave comments saying that this computer is bad because the graphics are not great … they aren’t supposed to be great and those are not productive comments. If you ARE looking for a comp for school (as I was looking for) this is an excellent choice with great specs and a great price. As per some of the other comments, I have had no problems connecting to the internet and if you are looking for a bigger laptop with a key pad this is not the computer you should have bought in the first place. Battery life a great (in my opinion, although I have not pushed it yet to see if it goes past 3+ hours). I agree that the arrow keys are a little annoying but then again my last two laptops were Toshiba Satellites and I was used those types of keyboards for a while. I’ll get used to it. Overall exactly what I thought I was getting and works exactly for what I want; surfing and reviewing/writing documents.

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HP 2000-410US, February 20, 2012

By 

E. Johnson (jackson, mi. USA) – See all my reviews

  

This is is good laptop for everyday use, such as homework, light gaming, e-mailing and surfing the web. The Pentium CPU is a much better and faster CPU then the AMD E Series in this price class. Its speakers o.k. (they certainly are not Beats Audio quality) and the touch pad can be touchy, but those are my only complaints. I have seen other reviews saying they have had overheating issues, but mine has been fine thus far. To get a laptop for the price of a netbook, I think this is a good choice.

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Great laptop for what it is – but poor out-of-box experience, March 6, 2012

By 

Peter W. Van Derpas “Peter van der Pas” – See all my reviews

  

I purchased this laptop for about 0 after rebate, and for the price it is a very good deal with one exception. The wifi/bluetooth adaptor does not work if you are anywhere more than a few feet from the wifi router. Web browsing is slow, drops connection or operates at limited capacity if you move away from the wifi router. I spent 4 hours e-mailing back and forth to HP support in India without a solution. The support is efficient and polite, but was unable to resolve the issue. Finally I discovered a work-around that provides good wifi connectivity, however, I do not consider it a fix because it involves disabling power saving features of this laptop. To find the solution search for “Wireless issues on HP2000-US with Atheros AR9485″ and read the posts on HP’s support discussion site.

What I did to fix the problem (I now get amazing wifi coverage throughout the house):
Simply go into device manager, select Network Adapters, select Atheros AR9485…, select Advanced – Power Save Mode turn to “off”
Next under Control Panel, select Hardware and Sound, Under Power Options select Change Battery Settings, Select “change plan settings” set both battery and plugged in to “Maximum Performance.”

I would like to see HP actually fix the problem so that I could get better battery life, but for now this will do. Aside from this wifi issue the laptop provides decent performance. The screen is very sharp and bright. It has sufficient disk capacity and memory can be expanded if you want to juice performance in running multiple aps or large graphics. Overall a great laptop for the price. I just wish I had the 4 hours I spent figuring this out back.

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like it, May 21, 2011

I used it on a 22″ flat panel TV. I worked great. All of the parts (including the VESA screws of different lengths) came with it. Works great. Got it quickly.

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I like this mount!, January 28, 2012

After reading through the many reviews for various mounts, I decided on this one with a little trepidation. After all, only a few people had rated it. But I’m delighted with the mount. It holds my 22″ LED with great stability. I can easily move it as needed and it articulates in every direction. And each position can be firmly clamped down if you had no need to move it. If you read some of the reviews about difficulties in leveling the tv, forget it!. This mount makes it as simple as the minor tilt required (no screw adjustment or careful leveling in advance) and it holds that position.

Some have complained in other product reviews about “cheap” aluminum screws. Well, ok, I’ll grant that — so be aware that if you’re going to tighten the screws (these have a hex head) into wood (as you are supposed to), you’d be better off using some steel screws. But be advised that you can twist the heads off of steel also.

This is definitely a “best buy”.

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Best of ALL worlds, December 5, 2010

Articulating , smooth , easy to install and inexpensive to buy. Nothing more can be said , or needs be said about this mount. It worked FLAWLESSLY.

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