Toshiba's Dirty Little Secret
Written: Dec 30 '04 (Updated Dec 30 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: see cons
Cons: Fatally flawed design - improperly grounded speakers cause random freezes and reboots
The Bottom Line: Buyers - BEWARE! potentially serious problems
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| turbosaab's Full Review: Toshiba Satellite Notebook PC (A75-S209) (a75s209)... |
Background: I purchased this laptop at Office Depot in New Orleans in December 2004. It was a quick purchase with no time for research due to the sudden demise of my previous laptop.
Everything went fine for the first few days. The wireless internet performed perfectly. The display was bright, sharp and made DVDs look great. After the purchase, I even read some online reviews which only echoed the virtues of the machine.
Before I came home from vacation, one odd thing happened. I was using the laptop then I handed it to my mother, and she asked me what was going on. I looked, and the computer was rebooting - it had spontaneously reset. This didn't happen again for the duration of my vacation, so I wrote it off as a freak occurance.
The serious problems started when I arrived home from vacation. On several occasions the operating system would suddenly freeze completely, such that I would have to hold the power button for 5 seconds to shut down and restart.
After a search of the Toshiba support site turned up nothing, I searched Google and discovered that I was not the only one with a problem. Far from it, in fact. On a website called notebookforum I found a thread with over 75 postings from users with the same problem.
The Toshiba A70 and A75 series was built and sold with a fatal design flaw. The speakers and other parts of the case are not properly grounded, causing any static electricity to be transmitted directly into the machine. I performed a test described by other users - simply walking across a carpet and then touching the left front speaker - which caused the computer to freeze.
Worse than the problem alone is a complete lack of acknowledgment and support by the manufacturer. Although they have known about the problem for at least two months, there is still no official recognition, let alone recall. There is no fix yet, either - brand new models from the factory have the same problem.
Evidently, all units in this model range are affected by this same defect. However, users may or may not experience significant problems depending on the environment and usage patterns. For example, my problems began when I moved the computer from humid New Orleans to my dry New England home (apparantly low humidity increases the likelyhood of static discharge).
If you are considering purchasing this model, I strongly encourage you to research this problem before making a decision. If you have already purchased this machine and you are experiencing problems, best of luck.
Footnote: The model I purchased and described my experience with was an A75-S209. This was my 10th computer and my 2nd Toshiba laptop.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 995
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
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Epinions.com ID:
turbosaab
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Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 0 members
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