Toshiba Satellite C850 15.6-inch Laptop (4GB RAM, 500GB HDD)

I bought this Toshiba model after my Acer laptop broke down after only 2 years of casual use. Encouraged by my mother's older Toshiba Satellite model, which has served her for years with no problems whatsoever, I decided to buy the newer model for myself, which had a vast improvement on specs. I have to say that this computer, for the price it's being sold, is near faultless. It does everything I wanted it to do in regards of schoolwork, and it also runs computer games incredibly well. Connection to the internet is smooth and unproblematic, and you are given a free month subscription to McAfee Internet Security to get you going. Tutorial is easy to swallow, and there are plenty of games and apps to keep you interested.

However, the one fault I have found with this computer sadly, is Windows 8. After setting up the computer with no problems, I was thrust into a screen where icons and apps were littered all over the screen, making it feel like a disorganized mess. No tutorial was offered on how to navigate the computer's functions here, and once I finally found the desktop icon, it returned me to the Windows 7 setup which I was a lot more comfortable with.
Barring the fact that there is no longer a Start button either, but moving on...
All in all, I give this computer a 4/5. Everything about it is perfect for my needs, with the exception of the newly installed Windows 8, which has left me so confused on its functions that I still haven't fully explored my computers capabilities. Regardless, a wonderful bargain for the price offered.

Spent ages looking for a new laptop after mine gave up the ghost. I am NOT a gamer and use it for internet shopping, banking, emails and word processing and for that purpose it cannot be faulted. The build is good but the keyboard is of very poor quality and the access to the cd drive in quite annoying, but then again it is cheap. The only major problem is windows 8, other that that for a general home user it fits the bill.

The Toshiba part of it has been excellent. It has taken a while to get to grips with windows 8. It's quite light compared to my previous laptop. Starts quite quickly and up to now I can only say good things about it.

This computer seems to be a very versatile machine, but, I am still getting used to Windows 8 (I think I prefer Windows 7), this is not a fault of the computer. I shall continue trying to use Win 8 for a while, but may investigate deleting it and replacing it with Win 7.

I went for the Intel Celeron 1000M 1.80GHz, 6GB RAM version as the specs looked better to me and it was actually cheaper than the other two options available from the drop down list on the amazon page for this product. This is not a top of the range laptop but then again I bought this for general purpose stuff ( email, surfing the web, playing DVDs etc ) so don't need a high performance and high price machine so this is perfect for me and my needs. Didn't like Windows 8 which looked like it was designed for touch screens and even switching to a different viewing scheme didn't help. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 but this was not without problems, mostly down to the fact that the hard drive on the Toshiba is formatted as a GPT (GUID Partition Table) rather than "the old" MBR. A bit tricky but I had to format the hard drive using a bootable hard drive utils DVD then install windows 7. None of this is Toshiba's fault and maybe there is a way of keeping the HD as GPT but I couldn't find a way that was easy. After Win7 installation I also had to manually download some drivers that were unique to Toshiba but this was not really a problem, they are available from the Toshiba website.
The laptop is now all set up with all my programs installed. It runs smoothly and does everything I require of it, hence 5 stars. The only criticism is that the keyboard does look a bit cheap but only time will tell if it is sturdy enough. A big plus is the USB3.0 and HDMI connector. Sadly, I found out today that the price has fallen by 5% since I made the purchase 10 days ago, but that's life with computer hardware. Grab yourself a bargain and get this laptop for normal daily use. Avoid if you are a gamer or run CPU intensive operations.

After the first half hour i was getting a bit wound up by windows 8 but having set it to desktop view to play a video through adobe flash player it looked just the same as windows 7. Then to get a start bar i went to ninite.com and downloaded the classic start shell. The laptop is pretty good so far but it's early days. Hope this helps people who are put off by windows 8.

It's exactly as I hoped and arrived so quickly I was really pleased (and free delivery too). My previous old laptop had totally given up and as I use it every day, I was only without one for a couple of days. Wonderful (and usual) excellent Amazon service and I would recommend this laptop and Amazon to anyone.

As promised the Toshiba is as easy to use and light weighted as described, without taking anything off the capacity.
It didn't take long to start up and then install the Microsoft Office bought on the same occasion.