Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757 15.4" Notebook PC (AMD Turion 64 Processor TL56, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)

I researched this model A215-4697 during summer of 2007 before buying it for my daughter to take to college. It's been running great.

I am puzzled by the fact that at least some of the one star reviews are from other models purchased at Best Buy.

This model (A215-S4697)wasn't available there. They had other Toshiba laptops, but not this one. I got hers at Circuit City.

Other models have other configurations and components, so the reviews may very well not be relevant to S4697.

This is one of the poorest performing laptops that I have experienced. It is sloooooooow beyond words. It freezes often and needs to be rebooted. I was thrilled with the price but after using this for just a few moths, I am going to kick this one to the curb and buy something else. I don't know if Toshiba is the problem or Windows Vista but this is NOT a laptop that you want.

I have had the A215-4697 for almost a year now, i purchased it Nov 07' during a sale at circuit city. The price was unbelievable..Paid 550. I have never had a problem with a blank screen, or with Vista. The only upgrade I performed was to add memory (my machine came with 1GB, the minimum to run Vista). However, a friend of mine has an older model, A135----, and she has had problems with the power cord and shutting down, and missing hibernate, and a over-hot touch pad. I had her download the bios for her model and it seems to help. My point is that I think toshiba makes an excellent laptop, although they had problems in the past. I previously owned a Dell Desktop, which was trash in comparison.

I've had this laptop for over a year in college (it survived my dorm room, so kudos for that), and the fact that I had bought it for about 650 dollars is a pretty good deal. But like the title suggests, this laptop is really only suitable for simple tasks, such as typing essays and doing basic research on the internet. The screen is bright and there are no bubbles or discrepancies of any kind, and the fact that the LCD panel is on one giant hinge basically ensures you won't get a flimsy hinge (common to Dell laptops, with two small hinges positioned at each end of the panel), and the battery is sufficient for small tasks (excel sheets, writing essays, watching movies on a plane, etc). I've had no boot up problems, no black screen or blue screen of death, and no software issues.

But that's about it.

The fact that Toshiba would even consider creating a laptop which runs the increasingly idiotic Vista on only 1 gig of ram can be considered a sin to the modern consumer, but making the ram shared with the integrated graphics card means Toshiba has made the prince of darkness look like a pansy. The shared graphics card makes the graphics absolutely terrible for any type of gaming or movies, and the compromised ram results in slow and often non-responsive performance. When doing research, I usually have several tabs on firefox open at any given time- between 4 and 5. I always cross reference my research, so it takes a lot of websites to make sure what I'm getting is at least valid to the extent that two websites agree. This and the fact that I run music, am usually typing on Microsoft Word, and I need to switch between programs quickly makes the laptop's ram wheezing for breath. Literally. I can hear the heatfan rev up every time I start typing.
But then again, I play video games and type pretty fast, and always click things fast when working on the computer. I'm more used to a high end desktop, I guess.

Oh yes, and when I first got this laptop I had to clear out the junk programs (including the vile McAfee virus "protection" that further leeched my ram and eventually kept bothering me to purchase their full year protection for a nominal 89.99-what kind of college student would dish out ninety bucks for virus protection when there are better ones for free on the internet?) or else the computer just wouldn't start up within the first week you press the power button. And when you type, be sure to press FN + F9 to disable the over sensitive finger pad so that your cursor doesn't jump around. The slightest heat or vibration from the keyboard when you type makes the cursor whiz around the screen, highlighting text while you type so you naturally type over the text and have to painstakingly press ctrl+z to undo the keypad's overzealous malfunction. Press FN + F9 to start up the pad again. I ended up just shutting the pad off permanently, disabling Toshiba flashcards to save ram (it controls the finger pad) buying a readyboost drive to help cope with the ram deficiency, and buying a portable mouse.

But if you're just an average joe or jane who needs a versatile, affordable and easy to use laptop for typing up drafts and e-mailing consumer reports, this is a laptop for you. If you're at all not, I don't recommend this laptop for you, because there were many times where I just wanted to throw this laptop out my dorm window.

I bought the laptop a year ago. After two weeks the computer would crash at random times. I thought adding more Ram would help so I upgraded to 2 gigs.....still happened. I called tech support and they told me to reinstall vista. I did this and the problems still occured. I then sent the laptop back to Toshiba for service....problem not fixed. The warranty has now expired and this piece of junk is worse now than ever. The computer has crashed 28 times this month (Aug 08) I would give this laptop 0 stars if possible. Save your money!!!!!!

I've been using various companies' laptops to test.

A215-S4757's only flaw is that it doesn't have a bluetooth built-in. You can have an add-on, which is not a big deal.

The HD is abundant - 250GB. Though the screen is big, it is light compared to others.

I understand some people's coomplaints about the mouse-pad that makes typing fast annoying and time consuming because the mouse-pad is too sensitive and often knocks off what you have been working on.

(TIP: Uninstall he current driver and install "ALPS" mouse pointer software instead of "Synaptics."

I recently bought this computer, the first time that I turn on the computer everything seems to be working just fine. The second time the computer put itself a BIOS password and now I cannot access my laptop, I researched about this and apparently this is a well know Toshiba issue and they don't do anything about it. I call costumer service and they told me that I should take my computer to the support company in my country and wait for their solution.
THIS IS THE FIRST AND LAST TIME I BOUGHT A TOSHIBA. DELL is much better concerning new computers and costumer support.

I own this laptop myself and it is very impressive I have owned dell and hp laptops before and I got to hand it to toshiba, my satelite is superior to hp and dell. About the black screen of death that is very easily fixed just go to control panel and got to power settings then go to advance settings and adjust you cpu proccessor output to 100% and the black screen of death will permenatly fixed. I also recommend getting 2 gig of ram with it. Out of all the laptops I have owned the toshiba a215 s4747 has been the best especially at the price I have payed for it, not to mention that it has a built in webcam and mic, the keyboard is silver so it is easy to see in the dark with the glow of the screen. It has a wonderful dolby sound card so you can listen to your music in crystal clear audio. It can also label flash you cds and dvds so you can customize your memories. The only draw back is the battery life but you can always upgrade to a extended battery at the cost of the laptop you should be able to afford it. It also has a ATI Radeon graphics card for you gamers. It easily gets 5 stars, if you notice most negative reviews are dued to the black screen of death which can easily be remedied.

I have exchanged the Toshiba three times for a new Toshiba A215 each time due to the fact that at least daily on each one I have had the black screen of death occurs!!! I am extremely disappointed due to in the past Toshiba have had great inexpensive laptops. I am taking this worthless laptop back to Best Buy to find something else. Please don't buy this laptop as I have been through 3 in less than two weeks with the same reoccuring problem.

i never recieved the product and i am currently requesting an answer as to why. ive ordered several things from you this past year and had no problems till now.

I purchased the s4747 a couple months ago for <$600. I have found this laptop to be pretty amazing. I am able to run games such as Oblivion, ,GTA:SA, Battlefield 2, and World in Conflict. As well as watch 1080p content on my DLP via the vga out. The quality is amazing and smooth. I didn't have any problems with the screen going out but did have a problem with the SD drive not recognizing re-inserted cards which was vista related. Everything booted and connected perfectly out of the box.

The 200gb harddrive is nice although at 4200rpms its a little slow, but for the price, the size makes up for it and if you really need a faster harddrive buy one, they are cheap, it also supports solid state drives so I am just going to wait until those are affordable, so it's fairly future proof in the ram/hard drive department. Also, I bought some more ram. While 1gb is enough to run smoothly most of the time, sometimes it filled up to 80% when running multiple applications. 1 gb of readyboost helped out a little bit.

The s4747 is capable of running 4gb of ram(which is pretty amazing) and you can find 4gb online for $80. Oh yeah, the 1.8ghz turion 64x2 cooks, the built end web cam/microphone is nice and has pretty good quality, speakers are adequate not horrible, but leave more to be desired. S-video out is good for watching movies on older tv's, vga out looks amazing.

The design is very low profile, I am able to pick it up with 1 hand fairly easy from any position. I have dropped it twice, still works although I smashed a usb flash drive in the process. I also dropped a remote control on the screen which left a very small light spot for about a week before disappearing. When on my lap both fan locations are almost always open. Having a volume wheel in front is really nice, as well as the headphone, mic, wifi switch, and memory card reader in front. Over all the design is perfect. The glossy finish does fingerprint and smudge easy but just as easy, a damp cloth returns it back to brand new with minimal effort.

The ONLY thing that I don't like about this laptop is the battery life. It is really bad. I have it plugged in 95% of the time and haven't needed a time where I needed more than the hour or so it gives you on high performance, on low setting you might be able to squeeze out 2 hours. But it might be wise to buy a better/extra battery/different computer if you plan on using it without the plug a lot. Oh yeah, built in bluetooth would of been cool, but you can get dongles for a few dollars.

I really enjoy using this laptop, everything was as expected. lots of people complain about the mouse cursor jumping around when typing, here's how to fix that: when you type, to disable the touch pad, press the FN button (located on your keyboard, next to the CTRL button), hold and press the F9 button, located on top of the row of number button. Doing so will disable the touchpad. to enable it again, simply hold FN and F9.
about black screen of death: i don't know how to fix that. Does any know how to do that? i would really appreciate it if you can email me and help me out, it really annoy me. my email is: madison010101@yahoo.com. thank you and god bless all those who help.

The computer was as advertised and received timely. As an aside, not only were the Amazon prices good prices but there was no sales tax on the transaction. A real good deal.

Toshiba obviously does not care about its customer. My a215-s4757 has been in and out of the shop and "repaired" 3 times. Then when customer support said it was going to try to get my computer replaced- corporate denied me, and said i was supposed to send it in again! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

This experience has been an absolute nightmare. Why cant you help me toshiba. WHY!!!!!!!!! AHHHH!!!

I am very happy with this machine. I had some issues at first with the SD slot and the back screen (caused after the machine "slept"). Once I fixed these I am very happy.
To fix: installed new BIOS version (from Toshiba website) and resinstalled a Vista "hot fix" for the SD drive.
If you also allow the machine to sleep you want to set the controls that wake it. For example I added a regular mouse and if the machine was closed a movement of the mouse caused it to partially wake (leaving the blank screen). I set the mouse driver to not wake the machine - problem gone away. The machine awakens now on opening the case or a keyboard click. Working great.

Absolutely nothing wrong with this laptop except the ebony finish, which tends to show fingerprints. Others have mentioned blackouts, slowness and Vista as problems. I've had no blackouts at all. Sleep mode, hibernate, switching between three users, fingerprint scans, everything runs as it should.

I did remove all the bloatware, including the Office trial, Mcafee trial, Google desktop and toolbars and Pisca. I then installed the free Avast for my virus scanner software (much less resource hog than Mcafee). The only the I left were the Toshiba utilities and games. I went into the registry and removed all sorts of startup apps which were useless to me. After this, I gained quite a bit of performance.

Here is what I removed from the registry

From HKEY_Current_User_Software_Windows_CurrentVersion_Run, I removed

TOSCDSPD.exe
Windows Welcome (forgot the file name)

From HKEY_Local_Machine_Software_Windows_CurrentVersion_Run, I removed

TCrdMain.exe
traybar.exe"
HSON.exe
KeNotify.exe
NDSTray.exe
SmoothView.exe
CLIStart.exe
SynTPStart.exe

Everything runs just fine without these components. Do this at your own risk. If you are not familiar with the registry, you can utilize Windows Defender to disable these apps from running.

*** UPDATE ***
I finally got the blank screen of death. See below for a message I posted in a forum.

I think I fixed "blank screen of death" issue on my A215-S4767. The only time I could make this problem happen was while playing a Yahoo Radio Station with Internet Explorer 7. It never happened with Firefox.

Anyhow, I downloaded the latest BIOS, 1.80 and installed from Vista. I can't make the blank screen appear now. I do notice that the fan tends to run more than it did.

BIOS: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modSel.jsp

The BIOS may say for A210, but it is also for the A215 models. I'm hoping this is a permanent fix.

I purchased this machine because of its price/feature ratio. On paper, it's a great deal. In reality, the A215 series of Toshiba Satellites (maybe other series as well) continue to suffer from the aforementioned "black screen of death" affliction. I've just gotten my A215-S4767 back from a Toshiba authorized repair shop. Their solution? Alter the power management feature and jack the minimum processor power state to 100% While this seems to solve the black screen issue, it's effectively turned my laptop into a very hot-running desktop. This "official" fix cuts battery life by more than 50% and likely will result in the premature death of the processor. I'm 20 days or so beyond my return window so I'm demanding that Toshiba refund my money or give me an equal credit towards a more reliable machine. Bottom line: don't be tempted by the price.

We've had Three Toshiba A215-S7422s
#1 - Missing pixels on screen - exchanged for #2
#2 - Wireless card didn't work - exchanged for #3
#3 - Blue Screen of Death - see Ricardo, Michael Ditowsky and Rajeesh below

Supplement to their very good info

1) DO NOT CALL TOSHIBA - This only added to our aggravation - the phone attendent, no doubt on the other side of the planet, seemed as if he were reading que cards to respond to our questions, and denied any knowledge of such a problem as the BSOD.

2) Best path to Advanced power options in Vista is: Start, Control Panel, CLASSIC view, Power Options, Turn Off Display (to access next link (proc pwr mgmt)), processor power mgmt, change minimum processor to 100% (though we're also going to test 50%). Also may want to change battery/plugged- in options to "never"

3) Cross your fingers, knock on wood, throw salt over your left shoulder, and kiss your wife. Good Luck.

We were looking for our first family laptops when we found the Toshiba Satellite A215-4757. It was such a great deal we bought two of them. Our initial impression when we started to use them was these were very competent machines that even outperformed our home PC. With 2GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive, memory is no problem. This computer has wonderful audio and video capabilities and a nice 15.4" screen. Buttons and controls are easy to use; even better if you buy a wireless mouse. In addition to this, web browsing with the wireless-G card was extremely fast and without hesitation. The added bonus is that the DVD/CD drive burns excellent quality video and audio disks.

Trouble in paradise started when the infamous "blank screen of death" appeared on both computers within the first week. We were reluctant to return or exchange the laptops as we had already installed antivirus software and Microsoft Office 2007. We called Toshiba tech support and they were no help. They claimed to know nothing about the problem but would mark my complaint in the record and notify me when they had more information.

Relief came in an online search. We had read up on this defect on a google search and other reviewers found a possible fix. It involved working with the power management options and read like this: "On Windows Vista try going to the Power Options, advanced options, processor power management, and change the value of the minimum processor state to 100%." We were skeptical at first but decided to give it a try on both laptops. To our surprise, it is almost a month later and this has never happened again on either laptop and we are extremely happy with our purchases. We actually give this laptop a 5 star rating, but subtracted one star for the shoddy Toshiba tech support which still doesn't acknowledge a defect or this fix. I highly recommend this machine, but be aware you may need to adjust the power options setting to avoid this problem.
-Michael Ditkowsky

I purchased the laptop before reading the reviews about the "black screen" issue and sure enough, my screen was going out on a daily basis. I did call Toshiba to see if I could just get a replacement and they said they dont do replacements. This was already my 2nd one because my first one had a dead pixel. As a last resort I set my minimum CPU usage at 100% (as someone had suggested on a different review site) and it fixed my problem.

The first notebook I received woul just shut down randomly. I returned and Amazon sent me another one. The second wouldn't even start up. They were both awful. I sent that one back also and opted for my money back.

I have been a Toshiba fan for a while. My last notebook lasted for 6 years and I still use it occasionally. I bought the A215-S4747 at a local Best Buy store. Then I too experienced the " deadly blank screen" but let me stress that the blank screen was caused by the default options in the Control Panel > Power Options.
If you tweak the "Turn Off Display" and "Put Computer To Sleep" options, it basically resolves the screen blanking issue.
I havent experienced any problems since then and personally think, its a bargain for the price. The dual-core architecture, provides higher throughput and a good performance boost. I added another gig of RAM and have no complaints so far. I would recommend it to somebody who is looking for a good product at a bargain price.

System goes black and does not respond except for turning it off and on again. happens on average once a day. Google search said fix in vista to set minimum cpu power usage to 100%. Installed XP on system so not solution. Not sure if solution means CPU will always run at 100%. Otherwise great. Very pretty. Could not return my item because I left country after buying.

So, I needed a new laptop because my last model, an Inspiron, was prone to randomly threatening to explode.

The Toshiba is honestly beautiful, it runs everything amazingly. I love Vista too (and haven't encountered issues with it yet). I'm a graphics artist and often run Photoshop CS2, Corel Painter, and a game or two at the same time alongside AIM and it handles everything flawlessly.

But, of course, there's the Black Screen Of Death. Nothing I do can seem to fix it, so I'm going to take it in soon. My advice? Shell out a couple extra hundred for a Dell. I just might go back to my Exploding Inspiron rather than deal with losing my art every few hours. :P

Great lap-top, but 1gb ram is not enough. Too slow. I happened to have 2 GB from another laptop and I swapped it. Then it ran like a dream!

I have a Toshiba Satellite A215 and experienced the blank screen pretty much every day. Wasted many hours on the phone with Toshiba techs reinstalling Vista, updating the Video Driver and BIOS which DOESN'T WORK. So I thought what the hey I'll just go without a computer for a week and have Toshiba fix it. Sent it in (which was a major hassle to go through UPS) and about a week later I got it back. Whoo Hoo!! Finally, a working computer right?! WRONG!! About 2-3 hours after running it BLANK SCREEN STRIKES AGAIN!!!! (All they did was update BIOS) So for those of you thinking about sending your A215 in to Toshiba DON'T DO IT!! It will come back still defective. My story however I believe at this point ends happily because of a suggestion someone posted on this site a couple weeks ago. This was the user's suggestion "If you are running VISTA, try going to the Power Options, advanced options, processor power management, and change the value of the minimum processor state to 100%." (THANKS RICARDO!!!) It's been a week now and still no blank screen. My computer NEVER has gone that long without blanking out so I'm extremely hopeful the problem is solved. Hope this works for everyone.....

-Trevor

i bought this laptop because a had to change my vaio, and I think that toshiba is an excellent device, but to be honest i want to change vista.

Overall a great product. I only have a couple complaints:
1. I would have liked it to come with more ram, or at least only one slot used.
2. I would have preferred Win XP instead of Vista as Vista has some issues, but this is not the fault of the machine.

I would recommend this machine to anyone. Upgrade the ram and you can do pretty much all you would need/want to with it.

This is my first laptop ever and I love it! My parents bought this Toshiba last month from Staples and it's running without any problems. Because of 2 GB of RAM, it runs very smoothly and quickly. I think you can play the Sims 2 or any other 3d games on it because of its ATI Radeon graphics card. The laptop also comes with a small web cam and a ton of hard drive space. The screen is bright and clear and you can run a lot of big programs like Photoshop without any problems. It's very quiet and has a little vent at the side that gets a bit warm sometimes after hours of use.

I honestly don't see what everyone is complaining about because I haven't had any experience with the the screen going black. It does become black when it goes into hibernation to save power after like a minute of inactivity but pressing the power button or the touch pad brings the screen back up. Hibernation can also be turned off by going to Power Options in the task bar.

The biggest downside is the battery life. It only lasts for two hours and and the AC Adapter gets warm very quickly. Another con would be that it comes with a load of programs and ads on the desktop but they can be easily deleted.

Overall, the Toshiba Satellite A215 is a great notebook considering its price.

I bought a Toshiba Satellite A210/A215 Series laptop little less than two weeks ago. Let's just say it's going back this Monday. Like others here who have laptops from the Satellite A210 series, my screen randomly goes black while the power appears to remain on. Moving the mouse, hitting the keys, doing ctrl + alt + delete does nothing. Only a hard restart works. I can't say I'm a computer expert, but going by the other reviews, it seems Toshiba has built a faulty product. Considering my much older laptop, which lasted me four years, never went to the black screen of death, I can't imagine why this new, and semi-expensive product would be so fatally flawed. A laptop shouldn't go to black screen the first day you get it! Perhaps it's overheating (even though I have a fan underneath), perhaps the brand has faulty components...I don't know. All I know is I now have to be burdened with bringing this back and getting a different brand. It's a shame because otherwise the laptop is great, and from what I hear Toshiba was considered by many to be a good brand. It seems "WAS" is the keyword. I recommend that people don't buy this laptop until Toshiba fixes this major flaw.

Dont buy this laptop, and if you are travelling abroad, dont buy Toshiba.
After 6 weeks it went dead, and online support was no help, told me to send it in for repair, contacted Toshiba Mexico:They want 100 dollars up front to do anything, I am now thinking of throwing it away and buying a Gateway instead.
Mexico October 5 2007

My new laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757. It came with 2 gigs of ram, a dual core processor, a 250 gig hard drive, and a web cam which I haven't bothered with yet. It is LIGHTNING FAST and I got it at Best Buy for under $1000.00.

But it has one serious defect that had me considering taking it back to the store for a refund. It was intermittently going into hibernation mode once or twice a day - and wouldn't come out no matter what I did. This was REALLY FRUSTRATING!!! Sometimes it went into hibernation even while I was actively using the keyboard!!! Toshiba's tech support people were clueless. They advised me to re-install windows and a bunch of drivers from the recovery cd... to no effect.

I did a Google search for the phrase "Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757" and discovered lots of negative user reviews... many others are experiencing this problem too... and Toshiba's recommended solution of using the recovery cd doesn't do squat.

But I REALLY LOVE THIS MACHINE otherwise... can't type the letters large enough to emphasize this fact...

So I began playing around with the machine itself and believe it or not I found a workaraound for the hibernation problem that works for me:

1. Go into CONTROL PANEL

2. Go into HIGH PERFORMANCE/change Plan Settings

3. Change the setting "Put the computer to sleep" from the default of 20 minutes to NEVER and click SAVE CHANGES.

After doing that the problem simply STOPPED happening!

So, despite the negative press, I would still recommend this machine as a good buy. Just be prepared to go into Power Options and set auto-hibernate to Never.

It's a pity Toshiba tech support couldn't think of thaton their own... and a pity Toshiba quality control didn't discover the problem before these machines started showing up on shelves.

By the way, HP makes a similar machine for about the same price.

My two cents...

Jeff P
San Diego, CA

So i neglected to do research before purchasing this computer. Boy was that a mistake. It seemed like it would be a great notebook that had all the specs I needed. It took about two hours before the screen went black the first. I lost count at 25 times after that. I took it back to Best Buy and they were very sympathetic to my dilema. They gave me another one to take home and I thought my problems were solved...boy was I wrong. The same thing happened again and I had to take it back. At this point I decided to buy a more expensinve HP instead and I have been more than satisfied. Dont buy this computer unless you want a one headache after another.

I'll review the Toshiba A215-4697.
BASICS: 160 HDD, 1Gb Ram. ATI Radeon 120 up to 300+ Mb of video Ram (shared) and lots of other stuff.

To make it short: I love this computer. It works fine. Does what it's supposed to do, and, since it's not a Mac, it requires you to set it up before it will be the way you like it. After that, it's done and it works.

The wireless conection works fine for me and the S-Video video output allows me to extend my desktop into my TV so I can easily play a DVD for my girlfriend while I browse the Internet without any lag.

The CD-DVD writer has worked flawlesly.

The bad thing: UNWANTED SOFTWARE!!! This is my first branded computer and I don't know if it happens in every brand of computer. Lots of unnecesary software comes bundled with the computer. It takes about 1 hour to get rid of it all. After that, I installed my favorite aplications.

IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are 2 issues people have been complainig for:

1st: Computer screen going blank. I don't have that problem (hope it stays like this).

2nd: You are tiping and the cursor jumps into another line and your text goes all screwed up.
Solution 2: To solve the crazy-cursor when typing, you have to reduce your Touchpad sensibility. Go to Control Panel (in classic view). Then open Mouse-> ADVANCED tab -> click ADVANCED FEATURE SETTINGS -> 'Pointer speed and tapping settings'. Look for the 'Tapping settings' button and click it. You-ll see 'Operations during key input' enable it and this will disable the touck pad tapping function while typing. Worked for me!!!! No more crazy cursor.

You may also like to look for the 'Pointer speed and tapping settings' button. Slide the sensibility arrow all the way to the left. But that is not necesary to stop the crazy jumping cursor.

Did I made it short? NO? Sorry... love to have people reading. :-)

If you are running VISTA, try going to the Power Options, advanced options, processor power management, and change the value of the minimum processor state to 100%.

I have a A215-S4807 and was facing the same problem that many people reported here. After doing this, the problem disappeared.

2 weeks ago our laptop died and because I swore I'd never buy another Compaq again, we went with the Toshiba on the recommendation of our computer tech. BAD IDEA!! The first day we got it I was on the internet and the screen went black. I figured I must have hit something that set it in hibernation mode so I held down the power button until it shut down and restarted it again. A couple hours later, same thing...the next day, again and so on. I decided to do some research as I was planning on taking it in tomorrow to have it looked at. Well, after going on many websites, I have discovered this is happening all over the place. I am not the only one!!! I wish I had read these reviews before I bought mine.
Needless to say, I am taking this laptop back tomorrow. I am not wasting my time with a company that KNOWS they are selling a product that is flawed and yet they continue to do so.
Don't buy this computer, you will be sorry!!

I am having the same problem, and I just got mine 3 days ago now. It got a blank screen 3 times now, and the only way for me to repair it is pushing down on the power button and forcing it to shut down. After that, I can restart it again.

I bought this notebook laptop to go to college with, but I don't think it's very reliable. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to call Toshiba tech support, but I've read at many places that people are still getting the same "blank" screen problem even after updating and installing the BIOS and graphics card. If the tech and support are just going to tell me to update the BIOS or update the graphics card, then I'm not even going to try it and return it.

I leave for college in just 3 days, so I seriously need a laptop that will last me for about 4-5 years, and longer than that.

DON'T BUY this laptop, because as I have read through many websites and support forums, it seems that a lot of these laptops of Toshiba are having this problem. Either than the blank screen problem, the laptop works perfectly fine.

But if I'm going to be writing a very important paper and then it goes to a blank screen, I will definitely be angry if that happened. I think I'm going to go for an HP, Sony, or buy a Dell laptop instead. The brands that are the most reliable. I thought Toshiba was a reliable and good brand to buy from, but I was wrongly informed. I really think they should have a recall on these products.

A co-worker bought this computer then I bought the same model the next day. He started having the problem with the screen going blank at random times, requiring hard reboots, on the first day he used it. This continued over the next few days, it happened 10 times total. He then returned it to Circuit City. When the sceen goes blank, you can see that there is still power to the sceen, but its not displaying any signal.

I am now having the same problem, but less frequently than he was. Toshiba tech support had me do a couple driver updates but that didn't solve the problem. I've been running the laptop with the battery removed and the AC adapter plugged in and haven't had the problem return in the past 24 hours, I don't know if this will continue however. Has anyone else tried running the laptop on AC power alone and the battery removed - and still have the blank screen problem?

Update: Well it just crashed again. So far I've done the BIOS update, graphics driver update, and ran with the battery removed....still get the blank screen

Got mine for a great deal at a box store a couple of days ago, but might take it back in the end. The mousepad is sooo sensitive, it makes the cursor jump around all over when you are typing...so there you are typing an email and boom...where'd the cursor go? It's two lines up typing in the middle of a different sentence. And it did this over and over and over. I have an old Dell laptop with the same style mouse and it never does that.
Otherwise I like it so far, but a very basic thing like that gets annoying very quicly, so if you get one...check out that issue.

I bought this computer thinking that it would be a great tool for bringing to college (the 200 GB hard drive was the main sell), but the screen keeps going blank and the touchpad does not work well. It highlights things I don't want highlighted and kept locking, and as a person without any patience whatsoever, this has become a problem. I've called Toshiba countless times and their technical support is terrible in helping me with this problem. I'm returning this laptop this weekend and getting the laptop I originally wanted...an HP. Do not spend your money on a laptop that just keeps giving you problems.

Like some other people, I recieved my computer and was extremely excited, because this time, I actually paid for mine instead of my parents. I turned it on, connected my external hard drive, and started to play music. BAM! Screen went black, music turned off, and the only way I could continue was to hit the power off button, then power it back up. This is completely unacceptable, and I have no earthly idea why Toshiba hasn't issued a recall. I wouldn't have felt compelled to write a review here on Amazon, but I took my computer back, and got another one. The same GODD*MN thing happened the day I got it! I am stunned, sitting here with a non-working computer, thanking the sweet lord for the fact that I kept my reciept. I would go with another computer, and dont even waste your time hoping to get one that works. Other than that, its an ok machine.

I bought this and it's nice for the price. However, the review states that there is a biometric fingerprint scanner on this model and that it has a dvd burner that can do Labelflash. Some Toshiba laptops have the fingerprint scanner and some have the Labelflash compatible drive, but this model (A215-S4747) has neither...or so mine doesn't!

"I wish they had provided a single 1GB SO-DIMM rather than two 512MB's. I had to pull both out to upgrade to the recommended 2GB."

what kind of memory did you buy for this cuz im trying to upgrade mine to 2Gs but I'm unsure of what kind to get, and wondering what kind you got P. Pimental . Thanks

I bought this at Best Buy locally. I recieved my first one and the screen would suddendly go blank. I would have to restart it by pushing the power button. I took it to get diagnosed and it was a bad motherboard.

Just recieved the replacement. It did the same thing the first time I used it. Assuming the motherboard is bad.

When I took this one back, I was told that there was another one that came in with a bad motherboard.

I am extremely disappointed that if I could give it Zero stars I would. Please buy something else and save yourself the headache.

Don't know what features I like since it didn't stay on long enough to really use the computer!