<p>Toshiba Laptop Computerproved to be The Crummiest Product We’ve EVER OWNED!!
I bought my son a Toshiba laptop to take away to his first year of college, 200 miles away from home.
He came home for a 1 week intercession, started studying and using the Toshiba and the hard drive burnt out. The laptop was 11 months old and cost me $2,500 approx.
I took it to the Toshiba “warranty” shop and was told to call the next day so I could pick it up fixed. I ended up calling for 5 days straight,and getting the same lie: “tomorrow”
Finally,a “supervisor” told me “no hard drives in stock, all on back order, no ETA”
My son was going to fail 2 college courses as crucial term papers were due the following week!!
The first independent computer repair shop I went to got me an installed original Toshiba Hard Drive in 1 day.
I was told that it was a very well known Toshiba occurrence, whereby warranty was denied so that Toshiba can sell a new drive, out of warranty.
It did not matter that I had purchased extended warranty!!
Tallying up the week lost waiting for the “in - warranty drive”, the purchase of the new “out of warranty” drive, the transportation back and forth to pick up all the software belonging to the College Intranet Network and configuration software, the labour to re-install all and the time constraints of having to hand in term papers and not being able to have a laptop to prepare or retrieve data , my cost was over $ 3,000.The hardening of the arteries (my wife’s and mine’s) wewre a bonus.
To cap it all of, the icing on the cake came when friends found out, through internet searches that our Toshiba model had a factory installed defective drive , a fact that was (naturally)hidden from me but was buried right on the Toshiba site. So, the company knew and still hang me out to dry. A further net search revealed a $2.1 billion(no typo, BILLION $) class action lawsuit already "settled’ by Toshiba in the US “for selling defective laptops”(ZD Net) Plus, naturally, hundreds of letters of complaints and outright hatred from duped consumers, such as I.
BEWARE TOSHIBA!!!</p>
<p>Which model Toshiba laptop did you buy?</p>
<p>By the way, the 2.1 Billion dollar settlement that you mentioned was back in 1999 for defective floppy drives built into some Toshiba laptops, not hard drives. See the following: </p>
<p><a href=“http://news.zdnet.com/2110-9595_22-516343.html[/url]”>http://news.zdnet.com/2110-9595_22-516343.html</a>
<a href=“http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-516294.html[/url]”>http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-516294.html</a></p>
<p>That settlement was caused by bad/flaky code written for NEC controller chips that many manufacturers used in their floppy drives, including Toshiba and IBM.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I’m sorry to hear about your bad experience…</p>
<p>We bought our daughter a Toshiba laptop (through her university) to take to college for this past year–same experience as you, prosenw. Computer support at her university told her it basically cannot be fixed. What a waste!</p>
<p>my daughters high school has all 9th graders get laptops- they started off with Toshiba ( I wont tell you what they changed shib to )
now I beleive they use Dell.
However we have always used Apple ibooks or powerbooks for the last 17 years- very happy with them.</p>
<p>My gosh, what a horror story! We bought a Toshiba laptop for D last August, and things seemed fine until a couple of months ago. At that time, her laptop started to overheat and shut down whenever she attempted to download music or Anime from the web, or watch a DVD. She called tech support at Toshiba, and they attempted to walk her through some things, but nothing seemed to help. They told her to ship it back to the company. She was still able to write her papers using the computer, so she elected not to try to send the machine back to the company until she came home for the summer.</p>
<p>Just before exam week, she phoned me to say that she thought she’d figured out the problem. As long as she put something underneath the back edge of the machine, thereby elevating it up from the surface of her desk, more air circulated underneath the machine and it didn’t overheat and shut down. So far, so good. Otherwise, her computer becomes blistering hot if she uses it for any prolonged period of time. We bought the extended warranty and have not, as yet, attempted to use it. But Prosenw’s story makes me nervous.</p>
<p>How is it that Toshiba’s laptops were rated so highly not so long ago?</p>
<p>
Maybe there’s been some real changes in mfr. I had a Toshiba notebook for years and it went on and on and on. Never had any trouble. Just finally needed to update last year. Guess it’s lucky I went Dell. Too many horror stories here to be a fluke.</p>
<p>Well, for another side of the story, I own two Toshibas (the older one which has now been passed on to my daughter), and never had any problems or issues other than the type of things that can happen to any computer (like getting a virus, or something). Toshiba gives free 24/7 phone in tech support during the entire warranty period, which is a lot better than most companies. I have heard all sorts of horror stories/problems with Dells - but I tend to take these with a grain of salt – because of the problem illustrated by this thread: if a person owns a product (computer, car, whatever) and that particular product has a problem, the consumer immediately blast the company and all of its products. So of course, under that rationale, none of us should ever buy a computer, because every company makes bad products and has terrible tech support, since somewhere along the line in selling hundreds of thousands of computers, some people end up with defective products and get frustrated when the problem cannot be fixed as fast as they would like. </p>
<p>An overheating issue is true for most new laptops - the powerful chips they come with run very hot - and I always put a pad under my computer. In fact, overheating and ventilation issues are simply a constant problem with computers - each new generation of chip is more powerful and runs hotter than the last generation. See: <a href=“404 - Winona State University”>404 - Winona State University;
<p>We’ve never owned a Toshiba. My son has a Dell, and it needed repairs when he brought it home on break. Dell mailed a part, and then told us it would be $768 to get the “correct” part. My son spent many hours on hold trying to reach Dell. He took it back to the school IT department, and they fixed it for free. Fortunately we bought the computer through the school so they had spare parts on campus. </p>
<p>So I am now sold on buying the computer through the school whenver possible, because they were much better about repairing it, and much cheaper! Okay, well minus the cost of tuition. :)</p>
<p>I got a free Toshiba laptop at work. So far they have had to replace the hard drive twice in one year. I never take it home so it is not getting abused at all.</p>
<p>Wow, I’m glad to have noticed this thread. Toshiba was a brand I was considering buying for my son’s college laptop. I am afraid to buy anything at this point!</p>
<p>Does anybody have any GOOD experience with any particular brands of pc laptops?</p>
<p>I’ve had two Toshibas, an IBM, and a Dell. I love my current laptop (it’s a Toshiba), but I have to say that the Dell was the real beast. I’d go Dell again if I hadn’t gotten great financing on this current Toshiba. </p>
<p>IBMs are great if you do business. And they’re dead sexy if you get the super thin and light models.</p>
<p>UCLAri,
Which Dell line would you recommend for an engineering undergrad? I am sort of familiar with the Inspiron and Latitude lines. Did you ever have any trouble with Dell customer service (I’ve heard bad things).</p>
<p>Would IBM or HP be a possibility for a good laptop? I guess I’m looking for maximum capabilities, minimum problems and great customer service. Does that exist???</p>
<p>Anybody have any experience with Sony Vaio? My son wants to take it as his sole college computer, but… maybe he’d better take his desktop!</p>
<p>My son purchased a Sony Vaio laptop in 2001 and he is still using that computer, though he is no longer in school and doesn’t use the computer for much beyond email and web surfing these days. He never had any significant problem or issue except the self-created one of not having a backup and letting the battery run down while working on a long project (data can be lost if a computer goes into hibernation mode). He says the computer is running very slowly these days but he thinks its probably a result of spyware or similar problems – he probably hasn’t defragged the drive in ages.</p>
<p>I have a Sony laptop purchased in 2001…reformatted once after teenage girl IMing brought in a virus. now upgraded to XP, it has been ery reliable and ahd no problems that seem manufacturer related, only viral miseries :(</p>
<p>the difference between XP and OSX is that OSX requires programs to have a user password ( like viruses) so you won’t get any automatically installed on your computer and XP installs in the background
of course you could probably run linux</p>
<p>whew… I’m a bit relieved. But, I’d better warn him to keep his antivirus up to date and run Adaware or something. And… maybe one of those little flash drives to backup. I’m looking foward to not having to schlep his desktop/monitor to school! Travel light, I say.</p>
<p>We have an old Toshiba that we still use for travelling…checking email and the like. No problems, but as I said it’s old–7-8 years, 2G hard drive, can’t remember any other specs. BUT, one word of advice for anyone purchasing a computer for college–check the college web page or call the IT department to find out what they can service if there are problems. It makes a huge difference. Dell seems to have cornered that market, at least at the schools we visited. My daughter has turned her Dell computer over to the school IT dept at least a half dozen times over two years, and they were factory-trained to deal with it.</p>
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<p>It really depends on what you want in a system. I don’t think you’re going to be looking at Latitudes much because they’re business only. Are you looking to game on it?</p>
<p>I’m looking at an Apple Power Book for my son. More resistant to virus issues than a PC, and Apple support is consistantly top rated.</p>