What kind of Toshiba laptop is best, Which should i get?

If you are looking at 15–16” then your tastes are different from mine, so lets see how different.

What sort of battery life do you want?
What do you plan to really do with it? Just surfing and watching videos, or are you planning to use it for hardcore gaming, video editing, etcetera? (Hint – that sort of stuff generally requires a laptop that sucks the battery down in half the time as a slower, more basic model.)
What color do you prefer? No joke; Toshiba offers many of their models in different colors.

Toshiba does have a laptop finder to help out, but you have to know what you really want. And some models are completely configurable too, so I really need to know what you are looking for to help you out much.

As previously stated elsewhere, you want to stick with Intel CPUs. You want at least 3GB of RAM to keep things snappy. I would not pay for MS Office or Norton anti-virus, as I use freeware equivalents of both that are actually superior. Whether or not you need an optical drive is up to you.

A little more poking seems to steer me towards the Satellite L655 series.

However, the L65x is customizable, and there are a ton of pre-built configurations, so narrowing it down to one is tricky, especially since there are many that would work for you.

How does the L655-S5096 look to you? That one is near the bottom of the range, though still better than mine.

For someone with my tastes, the T235-S1370 is a better fit. I like my lappies to be thin, light, not overly bulky (which generally restricts we to around 13”) and have enough battery life to do stuff.

At under 4 pounds, about the size of a 5-subject wirebound notebook, and over 6 hours easy, the T235 hits all my marks.

I have been using my Toshiba laptop for 3years now and had no problem so far (core duo:2ghz, 4GB ram, ATI Radeon 3400 graphic card) so I have to agree Toshiba laptop is very reliable from my experience

You didn’t really say details on what kind of laptop you looking for (for gaming, office work, simple web browsing??) but with your budget I think you could possibly get a decent laptop

below is best model under your budget and has good features
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba++Satellite+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174;+Core%26%23153;+i5+Processor+/+14%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive++Slate/1272996.p?id=1218246222297&skuId=1272996

if I were you I would definitely go with this model
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba++Satellite+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174;+Core%26%23153;+i7+Processor+/+16%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+640GB+Hard+Drive++Slate/1260852.p?id=1218244144261&skuId=1260852

hope this help ^^

I had my toshiba for 2.5 years, started having trouble about the end of the 1st year. At first I had DVD drive troubles, then the battery started to lose longevity, then my power port broke, payed $300 to fix that, then my fan stopped working, started my computer to overheat then promply scorch my kitchen table. I just bought a macbook pro instead. 2.0 quad core, 8 gigs of ram, turbo boot to 3.06, id say best alternative to toshiba, they failed me :(

@jdogg I’ve seen those fail too, and the battery longevity thing is chemistry; your MB will do the same thing.

Just out of curiosity, how do people keep breaking power ports? Am I the only person who doesn’t yank the cord sideways to unplug it? Mine have never broken, so it seems like the only people who have that issue are the clumsy and those who bitch about everything anyways.

Well the reason I got the MacBook Pro is that they actually have 3 times the battery life, a magnet powercord so you can’t break your port, and the thousand other features it has. Not saying it can’t break, just not as likely or as quick. I hope your not referring to me as a person who “bitch” about everything. I probably wouldn’t have got a Mac, except the fact that I’m tired of piece if crap laptops that I pay good money on.

@jdogg My T135 gets comparable battery life (I don’t see you breaking nineteen hours at 50% brightness with wifi on), and I know a few things about those connectors that concern me. Let’s just say I am less likely to have a short-circuit.

FYI, I actually rather like many things about Apple hardware. However, they do too many overly-optimistic things, make too many design decisions I disagree with, and charge tomorrow’s prices for yesterdays specs too often for me to not have some degree of disdain for them as well.

Like you, I also dislike paying good money for crappy anything. That is why I don’t regret my Toshiba, why I am glad I didn’t pay for my iPod Touch (barely outlived the warranty, and annoyed me until the day it died), and why I won’t ever buy another American car.

well, I guess it’s more opinion, but you must also take into conciseration the size of the MacBook Pro, they don’t have one of the battery packs that stick out an inch behind the laptop, and the laptop it’s self is under an inch thin, so I’m sure If the MacBook pro was as big as most toshibas, it’s would get a whole days worth of battery. None the less, I still understand your points, I just still feel like my own personal experiences have been alot better with apple.

They have; Apple has let me down a few times. BTW, my Toshiba uses a MB carrying case; same size and weight as a 13” Macbook.