Here are my thoughts on my newly purchased laptop, a Toshiba L875D-S7232. Overall I am very happy with my purchase, but will definitely be looking to upgrade to a SSD at some point.
Pros:
- 17.3" 1600x900 screen
- A8-4500M Processor
- 6GB of 1600MHz RAM
- HD 7640G Graphics (defaults to 512MB use)
- The Silver and Black color makes the laptop look professional
- Good Windows Experience Index Scores (scale 1.0 to 7.9):
- Processor: 6.7
- Memory: 7.0 (out of the box; 7.2 after updates)
- Graphics: 6.7
- Gaming Graphics: 6.7
- Hard Disk: 5.9
- 3DMark 06: 4693
- Price: $479.99 + tax at Staples
- Boot Time is 2-3 minutes including login and browser launch
Cons:
- No Hard Drive Activity LED (I replaced with a software one: http://sourceforge.net/projects/activityindicat/ )
- The shiny black plastic surrounding and under the keyboard shows dirt and fingerprints easily
- Norton 30 day trial - I uninstalled and replaced with Avast Free Home - http://www.avast.com/en-us/index
- Power Plug does not have a separate ground
- No Spot for a second hard drive
- It appears that video driver updates must come thru Toshiba instead of AMD, but this seems to be common with notebook APUs
Other Thoughts:
- Toshiba Software Update Page
- Island Keyboard may take some getting used to
- Function keys (F1-F12) default to their function use (change screen brightness/volume etc.)
- Was able to change this behavior thru the pre-installed Toshiba HWSETUP Utility
- Comes with Office Starter (ad supported Word and Excel)
- On Med/High settings at 1600x900 I get between 40 and 60 FPS (capped by vsync) in DDO
- On High settings at 1600x900 in Battlefield Play 4 Free I get ~30FPS
- Side exhaust does get quite warm
- Battery Life seems to be around 2.5-3 hours
Update 2016-07-06:
- Toshiba disabled virtualization in the bios. I am disappointed that they did this on a mid-range laptop to try to force more high end laptop sales.
