Getting a Toshiba L25-S119 Up and Running (In Toronto)
When I first saw this laptop, I was very delighted that it was in pristine condition.
The owner either had been keeping it very well or not using it too much. I believe it was the latter case because he lost the power adapter and the laptop battery. Before selling to me, he removed the hard drive. He told me that it had no problems. I trusted him and paid $70 for it.
Since the laptop was quite new, I added a 60G 2.5" hard drive that the owner used not too often for data backup purpose. I bought a genuine Sony power adapter and a new battery from eBay to have all missing parts ready. For safety reason, I would pay more for a genuine power adapter. Since the CPU is 1.5 GHz only, I increased the memory from 512M to 1G for better performance.
When I had received all the parts a few weeks later, I was very eager to check if the laptop really had no problems or not. The laptop had a Windows XP Home COA at the bottom. I powered on the laptop and inserted the installation CD. The installation process was smooth and successful. However, after installing the wireless driver downloaded from Toshiba website, I was disappointed that the wireless did not show up. I looked around the laptop and found a silver button at the front. I pressed on it and was happy again that the wireless showed up. I then took the laptop to my family room and installed the rest of the drivers from Toshiba website while listening to TV. I tested the laptop. It was like what the owner said - no problems.
Overall the laptop is fast and working well. I like the shape, its silvery color and bright LCD screen. After testing or playing it for a week, I posted it in eBay. With its pristine condition, genuine power adapter, new laptop battery and low price, it found a new home in Toronto in a week. Before shipping it out, I put a note on the laptop with an arrow pointing to the wireless switch so that the new owner knows how to switch on wireless.
