First of all I want to say what I have told all the Toshiba people on the phone: I am computer programmer and IT professional myself. Therefore I am carefull with my computer equipment, both at home and at work. I don't understand why this Toshiba notebook has failed so much other than it's a lemon!
I bought a Toshiba M35X on my wife's birthday in October last year because our old 1999 HP Pavillion with Win98 was due for replacement.in March the power connector on the back of the unit broke and it had to be shipped to their repair depot in Kentucky. On the phone, the Toshiba rep said, "That sounds like you may have damaged it." That was when I told her that I am a computer programmer. So she agreed to do the repair.
I had a local shop backup my data and the local UPS Store ship it to their repair depot. It took them a month to get the parts in, do the repair, and get it back to me. The same problem happened to my brother-in-law's Toshiba A60 four months afterward and his is six months older.
When it was returned after a month, my data was intact, and it worked fine from mid-April until two weeks ago, July 27th, when it would not boot up. It gave options of "Safe Mode" or "Last Known configuration", etc. But none worked and it kept trying over and over.
I again called tech support and was told that it would have to be repaired at the depot. The hard drive or the operating system might be bad, they said. So again I had the local computer repair shop backup my data, but they also tested the laptop's hard drive by putting it in one of their laptops. Their laptop started up with my hard drive! Then they put one of their hard drives in my laptop and got the same problem! So that proved that it was motherboard or circuts, not hard drive.
But two weeks later when it was returned, guess what? The computer was wiped clean as a brand-new computer! From what info I have, they did not need to do that. Yes, the shipping form does say that it's a possibility, but they did not do it the first time.
But wait, it gets worse! After being returned, I stayed up until 2AM that night to restore some of my data and my ISP's firewall software so that my wife could use it the next day. When I was at work the NEXT DAY, my wife called to say that the screen had gone blank after two hours but that the computer was still on.
That night I pressed the power button but it would not turn off and the screen was still blank. I had to remove the battery to get it to go off. I put the battery back in and pressed the power button. The laptop started up and the screen flashed the Windows XP logo for a while, then showed my Windows background and started loading software, but then the screen went blank without me even touching any key yet.
So for the 3rd time I called tech support and told him about the two previous times that this piece of junk has broken and that it had just arrived from the depot the previous day. He led me through some steps but nothing worked. I even hooked up the laptop's CRT output to my old monitor and nothing showed there either.
He said that a wire must have got loose in shipping. I told him that people travel with these laptops all over, in airplanes and through airport security so how could that happen! He said that he's not blaming the shipper, these things just happen. He said that it has to be shipped back again for repair again!
Now, none of the Toshiba people I have spoken with were ever rude to me on the phone. I just think that their laptop/notebook product is a ripoff piece of junk. I'll never buy one again and I am telling everyone I know about this.
The company I bought mine from was Office Depot and their "extended warranty" isn't much good either. Just stay away from Toshiba!
Mike
Pensacola, Florida
U.S.A.
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