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Toshiba Settles Class Action Suit 138

Posted by CowboyNeal from the making-amends dept.
sidney writes "I was happy to receive an email January 5 informing of a class action settlement that could get me up to $1000 back on my Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 Notebook. This follows an announcement last month that the court granted preliminary approval of settlement. The email looks like a phishing attempt, but whois says the website's domain is owned by Garden City Group who are well known for administering class action settlements. After going through four hard disks, motherboards, power supply daughterboards, and VGA cards in eight repairs during the three-year extended warranty of this piece of junk I'm more than happy to send it back to Toshiba in exchange for a down payment on a new Mac."
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Toshiba Settles Class Action Suit More

Toshiba Settles Class Action Suit

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  • ... to a new Mac. (Score:2, Informative)

    by sirber ( 891722 )
    Useless unless you put linux on it ;)
    • Putting Linux on a Mac is a waste of time. All the GNU tools can be run on OS X so you have to have to use it for some very specific task to justify putting Linux on it, and in that case I think you'd better go for an Intel PC (not a Mac :-) ).
      • I run Linux on my iBook G4, and I would say the install was not as a waste of time.

        A year and a half ago I wanted to buy a laptop that was lightweight, inexpensive (under $1200 tops), had a good keyboard, had good battery life, came from a vendor with a good reputation for reliability and service, and came with internal wireless. I spent hours racking my brain over half-decent PC designs, and I ended up finding inexpensive but low-quality machines (Compaq), expensive but great ones (IBM), or decent ones wi
        • You're not the first person I've heard of doing this. An acquaintance of mine was running Yellow Dog on his iBook and swore by it. I thought he was crazy not to run OS X, but he was a true believer. Different strokes for different strokers.

      • Re:... to a new Mac. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by delire ( 809063 )

        There are several fair reasons why many choose to run Linux on their Apple portable. OSX has an awful bash implementation by default, has poor memory management (sluggish to say the least), is pro DRM and is, by and large, extremely inflexible. As a so called UNIX operating system, it's going very much in the wrong direction. From what I've seen of of Ubuntu or Yellow Dog on the PB/iBook it's a breath of life (Apple Airport and lacking w32codec support aside).

        Apple is in the business of choking their own
  • "UP to $1000.."
    ..i'm sure it wont be that much, more like $150.

  • Be wary of the 15" powerbooks.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, 2006 @08:59AM (#14408284)
    I love my Mac, however with over 1000 registerd complaints pertaining to a lower memory slot failure, and a potential class action lawsuit about to emerge, you could end up with the same problem. http://lowermemoryslot.editkid.com/ [editkid.com] Make sure you take out AppleCare...
    • I've been buying Macs since 1991, but the first time I bought extended Applecare was when I purchased the Ti 800 DVI Powerbook, and I'm glad I did. Not because I had lots of problems with it, but because when I did have problems with the CD burner after the first year, they were promptly repaired. As a bonus, some external damage to the case (which was my fault) was repaired as well. The cheapest of the estimates for that repair was more than I paid for the Applecare, so I figured AppleCare has more than pa
      • I highly recommend AppleCare if you're getting a laptop from Apple.

        Alternately, you could just learn the law regarding faulty goods. I'm not sure how it is stateside, but here in the UK you'd get all of these faults fixed at no cost, regardless of any extended warranties you've purchaced. All new goods must *work*, and this goes beyond the "manufacturers one year warranty" they throw in your face at the first sign of a fault, it's up to six years for some goods. One mention of "Sale of Goods Act" and it c

        • The turn around for my repairs were all 4 days, but no 24 hour replacement.

          We don't have anything like the "Sales of Goods Act" over here, unfortunately.

          Also, while my experience with AppleCare in the U.S. has been excellent, I've heard not so good things about AppleCare in the UK. I'd ask around whatever Apple UGs you have over there about their AppleCare experiences.
    • And buy a refurb. Yes, that's right, buy a refurb. Refurbs actually get tested before they're shipped!
    • I have also had problems with my 15" Powerbook. I never could find third-party memory that would work reliably. Sometimes RAM with the correct advertised parameters wouldn't work at all! Only recently did I learn about "bus slewing" and that this model requires RAM that supports it. Apple certainly didn't make it obvious in their specs, probably so they could continue to sell their ridiculously overpriced expansion options.

      When it was about 6 months old, it slid off my bed about 2 feet onto a hardwood flo

  • Sweet. (Score:3, Informative)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:04AM (#14408300) Homepage
    After going through four hard disks, motherboards, power supply daughterboards, and VGA cards in eight repairs during the three-year extended warranty of this piece of junk I'm more than happy to send it back to Toshiba in exchange for a down payment on a new Mac."

    Good luck with that Mac. And your upcoming class-action lawsuit [forbes.com] trying to get it serviced.

    • Re:Sweet. (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:25AM (#14408375) Journal
      As someone whose two-year-old PowerBook is on a its second screen, fifth main logic board, third set of thermal pads and second PSU I am not sure that getting a new Mac is this guy's solution - especially since Apple lost my machine the first time I sent it in for repair (and took a month to admit it and another month to replace it) and took three tries over the course of a month to fix it the most recent time.

  • CNET rating 7.8 "Very Good" - why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:05AM (#14408302)
    CNet Rating: 7.8
    Avg. User Rating: 3.1
    From the review "As corporate as a blue suit and a tacky tie, Toshiba's Satellite Pro 6100 is a desktop-replacement notebook built strictly for business...the Satellite Pro 6100 is that rare notebook that does everything well enough to replace a desktop computer."

    How are we supposed to trust CNET's ratings now? Shouldn't they review and change their ratings to reflect its true/overall quality?

    'As corporate as a blue suit'... maybe it works great in one of those corporations like Enron - looks great at first and works okay for a while, but later it comes crashing to the ground.

    • Re:CNET rating 7.8 "Very Good" - why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sockatume ( 732728 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:10AM (#14408321)
      It could be that review units were manufactured to a higher standard, or subjected to more rigorous quality control, than general retail units. All they'd have to do is cherry-pick 30 perfect laptops from 30,000 wonky ones, send that 30 to review sites, and the product looks good. After all, CNet are testing the quality and design of the hardware, not its reliability.
      • It could be that review units were manufactured to a higher standard, or subjected to more rigorous quality control, than general retail units. All they'd have to do is cherry-pick 30 perfect laptops from 30,000 wonky ones, send that 30 to review sites, and the product looks good. After all, CNet are testing the quality and design of the hardware, not its reliability.

        So basically what you're saying is that Toshiba doesn't have Quality Control on their products, and somehow they are able to rank quality in 3
    • How are we supposed to trust CNET's ratings now? Shouldn't they review and change their ratings to reflect its true/overall quality?

      CNet has started including video reviews [cnet.com] that are brief, but usually a pretty good overview of the product. I would ignore the "editor's rating" number, though. I've never found those to be consistent, on any website. If you want an indicator of quality, check the user ratings. Those usually point out any glarinf product deficiencies.
    • Well, we got 2 of those notebooks where we work and we can't take part in the settlement because you must have at least 3 documented failures. So far, they both have had no issues whatsoever, and they're pretty much at their end of life for us.

      I guess we had a lucky batch or something, and maybe so did CNet. It's Either that or a golden sample.
      • I guess we had a lucky batch or something, and maybe so did CNet. It's Either that or a golden sample.

        I guess it also passed its pee test.
      • we can't take part in the settlement because you must have at least 3 documented failures. So far, they both have had no issues whatsoever, and they're pretty much at their end of life

        Then why do you feel the desire to have a part in the settlement? It's supposed to componsate people who have lost out due to reliability problems, not provide free money to greedy bastards.

      • Read the class action lawsuit again. A single failure since you purchased it entitles you to the claim. I'm kind of wishing I'd paid Toshiba to fix my dead HDD after the mobo went south twice, then I'd get $650 instead of $250. It is what it is, though.
      • You can take part in the settlement because everyone gets an additional year of full warranty and an additional 6 months beyond that for the problematic components. I have a 6100 Pro sitting on the shelf because the first repair broke down after my warranty expired. Having the new year will allow me to get the unit fixed for free.

    • Simple explanation (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      Almost all "mass media" reviews of products occur when the product is released.

      As a result, unless there are blatantly obvious build quality problems - "feels flimsy" and such, build quality/reliability problems go unnoticed in the initial review. Many build quality and reliability problems are invisible until a product has been available long enough for failures to occur.
    • For an added laugh, go take a look at their "worst products of the year" [cnet.com]
      Lowest score? 3.5 and the Toshiba Satellite M35X-S163 was rated 4.2.

      So yeah, basically whore shills.
      • I too find it interesting that with the exception of three laptops that scored in the 4.0-4.9 range, every other laptop scored a 5.0 or better. This is based on ratings for 519 laptops. So, of all the laptops they reviewed, 516 are average or above, and only 3 out of 519 are below average. It makes me wonder if CNET knows what the word average means. On another note, the highest rating is an 8.8, so they don't like giving out really high scores either.
        So the vast

    • How are we supposed to trust CNET's ratings now?

      This is a problem specifc to several root causes, with more than just CNET but other sites and magazines as well:

      • Review Products which are supplied by the vendor (prototypes or cherry-picked units). The supplier can swing reviews in their favor by sending out fortified review units while actual production units are not as well-made. Its always better to trust a reviewer who buys the equipment from a mechant, like anyone else would.
      • Payola, or in review
    • How are we supposed to trust CNET's ratings now? Shouldn't they review and change their ratings to reflect its true/overall quality?

      In CNET's defense, they didn't do a long-term reliability test, just a test of the features and obvious initial quality. We bought a bunch of 6100s based on our own internal testing which, like the CNET review, showed that it was a nice laptop. Only later did we notice that the suckers were always in the shop.

      As far as changing the review is concerned, unless CNET decided to d
    • Maybe their experience was like mine. I've had my 6100 for a while (2+ years) now and I've never had a single problem with it. In fact, it's been just as reliable as any other Toshiba notebook that I've owned in the past... and I've owned a lot of them, starting with the Toshiba T1000 I bought in the late eighties. I've dabbled in other brands, like WinBook and Compaq, but none have ever lived up to how good these Toshibas have been - and besides, these things still have the eraser head mouses that I lov
    • Thats why they have the Average user rating. CNET does its job by testing a few machines and giving it a score...obviously it is not possible for them to test it for months or years so their numbers (any companies numbers) are generally going to be better then an individual users numbers. CNET is good to use, but don't rely on that totally...or at least realize there is Average User Rating and put some credence into that.-
    • The SP6100, one of which I owned, usually lasted for about three-to-six months before failing; this was certainly the case for me (four main/power-board failures in eighteen months; three severe, one total). C|net probably only had it for a couple of weeks; and, when it was working, it was an excellent laptop for its time, so I don't see that original rating as a problem.

      I don't qualify for this because (a) I live in the UK and (b) due to much nagging after the fourth failure Toshiba swapped it for a Tec

  • Poor Toshiba Quality (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If it's any consolation, the Toshiba Satellite A75 I purchased last January is also a piece of junk. It is almost impossible to run at high clock speed without overheating. Anything that is both processor- and disk-intensive (like, say, a system-wide antivirus scan) is almost guaranteed to overheat the system. When it overheats, it spontaneously shutsdown.

    From the articles I've read, it appears to be a design flaw with many recent Toshiba notebooks.

    This is definitely the last Toshiba I will ever buy. It

    • If it's any consolation, the Toshiba Satellite A75 I purchased last January is also a piece of junk. It is almost impossible to run at high clock speed without overheating. Anything that is both processor- and disk-intensive (like, say, a system-wide antivirus scan) is almost guaranteed to overheat the system. When it overheats, it spontaneously shutsdown.

      Don't know if it applies to your system (and with it's age, you don't want to be playing these games anyway) but I recently revived a Dell Inspiron 8000

      • Recently? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
        The original i8k is an ancient model.

        While insufficient thermal paste is one issue, in such an old machine I'd first suspect heatsink dust clogging. (My 8200 has never had any overheating problems, although I have had to clean out the radiator/fans and re-lube the fans once.)
      • Another thing to try might be to vacuum/brush out the dust and cobwebs from the CPU/GPU cooler... This did wonders for my Medion (Acer) Aldi-special 2 GHz desktop processor notebrick. Before the operation it regularly shutdown from overheating, after it never did again. It also made the fan behave a bit more ear-friendly as it did not run at full afterburner jetstream whine all the time.
    • If it's any consolation, my Toshiba Satellite 1115-S130 (?) does the same exact thing, except it was purchased two years ago. I can leave a compilation running while I'm out of the house unless I leave the lid open enough for heat to escape, or else I come back to my laptop off and usually not functional when I boot since my updated software is looking at old config files.

      Plus I get the same problem I've seen with two other Toshiba notebooks so far where it will stop charging the battery, even though the AC
    • I bought a Toshiba and was unhappy with it. It was the Satellite Pro M70-SR3 which I got in early December. JUST past the 14 day return period, it started locking up big time. Every time I would set the computer down on a chair or bed it would instantly freeze. I took it back to the store, and after a big ordeal, was told I could return it. I too will never buy another Toshiba laptop, and Sony is out of the question too. Dells are crap from what I heard, Thinkpads are too expensive, so what does that
      • My dad has had thinkpad laptops going back many years. I still have a 266MHz machine that will run like a champ if I have the time to wait for it to load a page. The only problem that I've known my dad to have was the paint peeling off between the keyboard and the edge of the laptop (where you rest your wrists), but it ended up oxidizing and turning back to black anyway.

        I've had several friends who I've convenced to buy thinkpads, and now they swear by them. I think they are well built quality machines.

    • I've had the opposite issue with my Toshiba (A15 S129, barebones laptop). That thing takes a beating and never flinches. I've fallen asleep in bed while watching shows on it. Woke up 8 hours later, the thing is buried under blankets, but the Simpsons were still going strong. I picked it up by the back of it, and the metal around the parallel port gave me a nice little burn. Smelled like burning electronics too. So the thing never turns itself off when it gets too hot, especially now with one of the fa
    • Get the Toshiba fan utility from here: http://www.buzzard.me.uk/toshiba/index.html [buzzard.me.uk] You can force the fan on all of the time. It's the only way I can keep my toshiba (A-something?) laptop from shutting down and melting every time the CPU rises above 800Mhz, God know you could never do anything serious like gaming, spreadsheets or scrolling graphical web pages on one of these. If Toshiba _EVER_ provides a fix or financial compensation for those of us stuck with one of these unreliable laptops, I might consid

    • Re:Poor Toshiba Quality (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem with the A7x series, and a lot of the P3x series, is the copper fan grills tend to accumulate a ton of dust on them. The airflow is blocked completely after a while, and the system hangs. It is a design flaw, but Toshiba hasn't admitted to it yet. They just claim dust is a foreign substance and not their fault.

      Toshiba builds some of their laptops in house, but outsources a lot of other models to other manufacturers, and it seems these are the ones that are lower quality. If you're buying a Toshi
    • What about IBM or Dell...or even HP?

      I had a Toshiba (satellite 1955)...I liked it, but I did have to get the motherboard replaced...and their tech support people are morons.
      Then again, when I got my dell, I had to get the HD replaced three days after I got the laptop (ugh the software re-installation).
      • "What about IBM or Dell...or even HP?"

        Chinese [slashdot.org], evil and evil.

        Is there any laptop manufacturer left that isn't evil? I have a Vaio I bought before the rootkit fiasco, and I got it because it had an AMD (read "non-Intel") processor. Not even Apple can promise that any more.
        • Is there any laptop manufacturer left that isn't evil? I have a Vaio I bought before the rootkit fiasco, and I got it because it had an AMD (read "non-Intel") processor. Not even Apple can promise that any more.

          Stop Anthropomorpising laptops...they are not evil, and neither is the company. Some just happen to be poorly made, and some are not. I hear HP has a 64 bit atholon processor...that isn't a bad deal.

          Either way, everyone is going to complain about some company, so let us just look at the fac
      • I'll vouch for Thinkpads. These stay together - I dropped one four feet onto concrete once at Security at Midway. It was bent like a banana but still ran perfectly. I bought another with cracked LCD from eBay. The jarhead owner not only had stepped on it but spilled beer into the back. It ran anyway. On the IBM/Lenovo site you can download the hardware manual. Anyone with the slightest mechanical ability and simple hand tools can take apart a Thinkpad down to the back shell with that info. I did that, clean
    • My friend (now wife) bought herself a Toshiba Satellite a few years back. It lasted for 2-3 years and then just died. It was out of warranty, but we called Toshiba's support line and requested repair advice anyway. Nothing happened, so we sold off the few usable parts (battery, RAM module) on eBay and threw the laptop away.

      13 months later, a Toshiba technician called her up, saying he'd just gotten her support request. Oh boy ...

      Anyway, we're both happy Mac users these days. My wife's G5 iMac did stop booti
    • Same here - I've had two Toshibas (an A15 and an A75) and both ran out of steam way too early. I had to replace the hard drive and the cooling system literally days after the warranty ran out on the A15 (before the screen eventually crapped out), and then had to have EVERYTHING replaced on the A75. It's nearly all new components - only the keyboard and chassis are original. It's terribly frustrating, because I love the displays and keyboards on Toshibas. But like you, it's the last one I'm buying until Tosh
    • I bought my Toshiba Satellite 1905-S03 used and it had the same problem. I couldn't finish a kernel compile on the 2.4Ghz machine without it shutting off. I opened it up and cleaned all the dust out of the copper heat sink, as it was a major airflow obstruction. I also cleaned all the old white heat sink paste off and used a silver based compound. The CPU temperature is much better now, and the fan doesn't even run most of the time. I bought it cheap because the last owner apparently assumed there was somet

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:09AM (#14408318)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Apple is about to release a new generation of iBooks and/or Powerbooks, most likely including Intel iBooks at least. This month. So hold your horses.

      Hmmmmmn,

      Not so sure I'd be going for a first generation [slashdot.org] Apple product if I were looking for reliability....

      Its also worth nothing that Apple are under investigation [theage.com.au] in Australia for ignoring local warranty rules.

      Not too sure what I'd reccommend for a reliable laptop these days - certainly not Apple, Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Acer/Asus (shudder). A few years ago, it w

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Not so sure I'd be going for a first generation Apple product if I were looking for reliability....

        I was going to say the exact same thing. As someone who has been an engineer in a laptop manufacturing plant avoid the new ones. Nothing to do with Apple or any other manufacturer, or even laptops in general. Avoid first gen unless you can afford to be without it now and then while it's away for the inevitable repair. Unless of course you want a future class-action suit and see the legal process as an upgrad

    • "This month."

      That is not a complete sentence.

      For someone who claims to be a master of English after spending many years in boring and repetitive schooling, who posts severely off-topic and anal-retentive replies to others over simple spelling mistakes, with no thought of the actual discussions at hand, I find myself shocked and horrified at this lapse.

      Could it be? Is it possible that all this time you really were just a useless dumbfuck as many have suspected?

  • Did you really have to include the blurb about a new Vendor ?

    Jeebus, I thought the idea was to be more apolitical these days ....

  • Buy a Toshiba notebook, send it in for repair and back again, join a class suit, collect (up to) $1000...

    Seems like a particularly inefficient and masochistic method of confirming that a ThinkPad is the optimal choice for an x86 notebook.

    *shrug*

    • "Seems like a particularly inefficient and masochistic method of confirming that a ThinkPad is the optimal choice for an x86 notebook."

      And if that ThinkPad were to lose power (and have a dead battery) at just the wrong time during boot, it becomes a paperweight. However, I've only seen once, and it's the only design flaw I've seen in the ThinkPad notebooks. They may have corrected the design by now, as my ThinkPad with this issue is a few years old. Also, with a little bit of hardware hacking and about $50,
    • Thinkpads are nice but very, very, very overpriced for what you get. The best price/quality ratio I've found have been HPs.
      • I had to work on a HP laptop early 2005. The keyboard was horrible it would simply ignore keypressed or even forget that a key was down at all (very noticable in games when using cursor keys). I don't remember what model it was though.
  • Macs cost too much, thats why you will never see me with one. As for problems -- Apple does not do well with their first set of hardware from new lines(like the upcoming intel macs)
    • (I am not a mac fanboy - though my wife does own a mini)

      Macs cost too much

      Define "cost".

      In a monetary sense, yes I can see that Mac hardware is more expensive than x86 based hardware.

      But there are other costs that comprise that fun acronym TCO.

      When my wife set up her mini, all she asked me for was the Wi-Fi network password - I didn't have to do anything else for her, and she is not a computer geek. My personal time is worth a lot of $$ to me, so I really appreciated that aspect of the Apple system. Setti
      • When my wife set up her mini, all she asked me for was the Wi-Fi network password

        Did she install the OS, or was it pre-configured? If it was pre-configured, then a comparison to Windows is weak. It's just as easy to enter a WEP key in Windows, they even have a pretty little popup dialog to ask you if it is determined that one is required. And SP2 is secure out-of-the-box, with firewall & auto-upgrades turned on.

        TCO means NOTHING for one machine. When you admin a few dozen, then it matters.

    • Go to dell and price a top of the range machine with nice monitor. Then go to Apple and price a top of the range PowerMac.

      Do the same for a mid-range machine and compare it to an iMac G5.

      Repeat for comparable notebooks.

      Are Apple really THAT expensive? There are many cases where Apple is the cheaper option, especially when it comes to top of the range workstations.

      Just because they don't sell bottom of the range hardware so bad they'll only dare give you 3 months warranty, like Dell does, doesn't make them e
    • I bought the first ever version of the Titanium Powerbook - 400 MHz in ~ 2000. It was a completely new industrial design and a new chipset architecture based on the G4, following the black plastic G3 PowerBooks (one of which I also owned).

      I had zero problems with my TiBook, and used hard for the next 4 years as my constant companion. It migrated from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X beta to OS X 10.0, 10.2, 10.3 and now happily runs 10.4. Even after I broke the screen backlight in a motorcycle accident (I was hit by a
  • Toshiba and IBM make the best laptops out there, the trick is you have to buy the correct model. The satelite laptops are doorstops, the one you should have gone with was the Tecra line, they're bulletproof. IBM's Thinkpad line is also superb. Sony's laptops are worse than the Satelite line. I havent had enough experience with Compaq/HP laptops recently, but the Armada line used to be the chosen one way back when.
    • Never messed with a Tecra before, but I like Dells in general. (Just be sure to select nVidia for video if you plan to run Linux... ATI and power management don't get along)
    • I'll add my experience to this as both an end-user and also an ex-systems house/reseller engineering manager:

      Sony - don't sneeze near them, something will break. Big price premium for the brand name. Early ilfe (out of the box or soon after) failures 'notable'.
      Dell - clunky, heavy and below-optimal performance. Run hot
      Toshiba - over-priced for what you get. Choose your model carefully.
      Acer - well priced and fewer hassles than all the above.
      IBM - Generally well engineered and mostly reliable.

      My personal, mai
      • Sony - don't sneeze near them, something will break. Big price premium for the brand name. Early ilfe (out of the box or soon after) failures 'notable'.

        You aren't kidding! I was using a friend's ultra-compact Vaio and one time the system froze when I coughed and jerked the table it was sitting on. This particular Vaio worked fine when it was stitting on a hard surface, which defeats the purpose of having a laptop! Luckily for him it was still under warranty when the problem started occurring. It turned o

    • Wow. I have a Satellite P25 Series laptop and have been VERY happy with it for almost 2 years now. No problems! None! And I put in a faster P4 (went from 2.4GHz to 3.2GHz), more RAM (now at 1GB @ 400MHz), and I changed out the B wireless NIC for an A/B/G wireless NIC. I love my Toshiba.

      Now the Compaq that I used to have, on the other hand, sucked big time. Mailed it to Compaq three times and still had issues. I gave up on that piece of crap.
  • Attempt to post your own story about an email 4 months ago with a $1000 settlement on the 5100 series, and get turned down twice... log into today, and see they've posted one on the 6100... How was the 5100 not news if this is? Or is slashdot story posting just that random.

  • You know, this isn't _that_ surprising. (Score:3, Informative)

    by loraksus ( 171574 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:29AM (#14408705) Homepage
    Toshiba has had one of the worst records for laptop manufacturer's out there, both in terms of reliability and the people who they hire for "support". This isn't exactly news, people have been complaining about them for years. Google "toshiba sucks" and you're going to get results about laptops and PDAs.
    To those who don't know, Toshiba makes a lot of other things BESIDES laptops and PDAs (stuff like, oh, I don't know, something to do with propeller milling for submarines ;). The worst thing is, they have techs that you can actually understand, but talking to their techs is like talking to the retarded child of a 7-11 employee.

    That said, once you actually talk to someone without an indian accent, you're set. The folks they still have here are quite reasonable and easy to deal with. Probably the fastest way to do this is to file a BBB claim or contact their registered agent directly.
    Still, if don't want to cough up blood from a newly formed ulcer, get a warranty from another company (i.e. not toshiba). Not dealing with their support is easily worth $150ish.
  • anyone have any idea what Canadian customers can do? I've sent mine in twice for servicing. The article suggests this is for US customers only.

    Just curious,
    PL from Calgary

  • I regularly hear of folk with iBooks or PBs suffering from these mysterious motherboard failures.

    Apple's service leaves alot to be desired here in the EU also - a colleague of mine had a 5 week turnaround on repairing such motherboard failure. Another had to have hers shipped out to the U.S with a return date that swelled from 2 to 6 weeks. Her experience was bad enough for her to go out and buy a Thinkpad in the interim. A wise choice - IBM's service and Lenovo's hardware is hard breed to top.
    • IBM thinkpads were expensive and that put me off them, but having had two sony vaios fail after the warranty periods just expiring I vowed never, ever to buy sony and, though I switched to desktops after that, if i again buy a laptop it'll probably be one famed for reliability above all. I hope lenovo doesn't drop standards of thinkpads.
    • My wife had bad experience with Thinkpads. I'm not saying that means Thinkpads are bad (although I will avoid them on the grounds that I'll never hear the last of it if it does go wrong... kidding!) but rather that any machine can go wrong.

      Apple's strong point is their OS. I fell in love with their OS and I need Apple hardware to use it with support.

      I think I'll go with a refurb, though. I've heard they're more reliable.

      Most things are better than what I'm going through with my Toshiba Satellite Pro righ
  • You know it makes sense.
  • I would think, after 3 major repairs, you could demand a refund under your local lemon law.
    Even if not, some credit card companies offer similar protection, too. What did you find when you looked into these options?
  • From the PDF:

    Class Members with proof sufficient to establish the occurrence of 1 Qualifying Repair will receive $50 in cash AND a $75
    credit redeemable for the purchase of any merchandise available on www.toshibadirect.com AND retain the right to keep their
    Satellite Pro 6100.

    Class Members with proof sufficient to establish the occurrence of 2 Qualifying Repairs will receive $250 in cash OR a $325
    credit redeemable for the purchase of any merchandise available on www.toshibadirect.com AND retain the right to
  • ... until I witnessed what my friends went through:

    15" Powerbook: 3 motherboard replacements (1 year)
    12" Powerbook: top half "warped" so it would not longer close properly
    ibook 14": battery just started crapping out after short period of time.

    Now I'm not fan of Dell, and my Dell is a POS, but I got it used for $250 and it's lasted longer than any of thos above examples.

    If you want a durable notebook buy an IBM/Lonovo notebook.

    • According to one recent survey posted on Slashdot, you just have some unlucky friends. I recommend choosing your friends more carefully next time -- ask around and check their reliability, see what others have to say about their faults and quirks. You may be able to trade these unlucky friends in for a super BestFriend; you'll get years out of one of those.

      BTW, what generation were the notebooks? I ask because I'm thinking of getting a 12" PB for myself and want to know what I'm In For. I've already decide
    • Sorry to hear that your friends were so unlucky. I've bought one of the very first iBooks, another several years later, and a couple years back a 12" PowerBook, and I've never had anything go wrong.
  • I've had Satellite Pro's and Librettos (including the new one) which are just amazing.

    But I've also had one Satellite (non Pro), and not the model in the article; it was back for repair several times (motherboard, memory, battery, DVD, mouse, etc.), and after the year warrantee was up, I just gave up on it. It was a total piece of garbage. It sure would be nice to get some compensation for the incredibly poor quality of this unit, too.
  • Mine was serviced five times in two years. It was sad because my company would just send you another 6100 when your was broken. One guy had to go through 3 laptops before he got his original 6100 back. They had everyone get their computer serviced to proactive fix things and that left my laptop without sound until I finally could get rid of the thing.
  • Heh heh heh.... getting a Mac does not necessarily free you from Toshiba's shit quality *looks at the dead Toshiba 2.5" drive he painstakingly extracted from his Powerbook with the help of pbfixit.com*
  • I have one and I hate this laptop. I have never seen such an unmitigated piece of CRAP in all my time dealing with computers. I'm getting in on this.

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