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Processor Problems w/ Toshiba s504 & s507 Laptops?
Diridari asks: "The are some serious overheating problems with the Toshiba 5005-S504/S507 notebooks that Toshiba will not officially confirm. Many people been sending their boxes to the Toshiba depot more then once, but nothing was fixed. Since this notebook has a GeForce4go and is advertised as a desktop replacement, it should definitely be a nice gaming/multimedia notebook, but it isn't. The problem is that the CPU is a desktop CPU and during a Direct3D gaming session, or any CPU stressing application, it gets hot (Toshiba's cost reduction strategy by using the desktop CPU; I call it design flaw). I had a temperature of 65-73 Celsius during a test gaming session of DarkAgeOfCamelot with hmonitor. At 75 the box would shut down. The BIOS update from Toshiba throttles the CPU speed from 1.1G to 500MHz as a 'solution', which is not acceptable for a box that costs $2000. If I just wanted to read emails on this box, I would have spend $800 for a notebook." Has anyone had luck either getting Toshiba to properly handle this situation to their satisfaction, or via some form of workaround?
"If you want to read more about these problems, you can check
Compuserve's
Toshiba Forums [C:
expect long load times] and search for "Still overheating" and Google
for more information and user comments.
The Toshiba customer service is not helping at all. What can be done? How can I get the box that was actually advertised by Toshiba and not a very-expensive 500Mhz-for-email-only box? Do I have rights as a customer?"
Puzzling how PC makers finally decide to copy Apple, and this is the feature they choose.
If I were in their position, I would have copied the Titanium G4 (affectionately termed the "TiBook", pun on the Ti (the chemical symbol for titanium) and iBook). Instead they copied an old model that burst into flames without warning, as suddenly as Anakin turns into Vader. But, I guess I should just be thankful they are following suit in other areas, as the specs on these laptops are pretty sweet: 512MB memory and DVD out of the box, and nice crisp displays. And those 1.7GHZ P4's are really hauling ass. No wonder they lit on fire!
Anyway, keep up the good work, Toshiba.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
In politics, we vote with our voice. With respect to big business, we vote with our $$$. If your representative, or supplier, or whoever doesn't meet your needs, vote them out of office.
In other words, return the damn thing, and purchase a similar laptop from their competitor!
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
In other news, GCC 3.1 was released earlier today. No announcement yet though.. :)
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
If you had read the post, you'd have noticed that Toshiba WOULD NOT TAKE THE THING BACK. No refunds or exchanges.
Don't be a doofus: He's tried the easy thing, and they refused to honor the customer.
Only operate your computer in a large walk-in freezer, or in Arctic areas. HTH! HAND!
IANAL.
Since the computer doesn't work, you should be covered under the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.
Send it back, deny the charges for the credit card, and don't accept any return shipments.
We've got the Dell's with the insane NVIDIA chipset to do 3D presentations, and they don't skip a beat. They get warm, but they don't act like the Toshibas. A colleague sent his back (he ordered from PC Mall and they were cool about returning it for that problem. I do believe he ended up talking to Toshiba in the end.
Alright. First and formost, you talk to the company (as you have). And they're not going anything..
Next step is probably to inform toshiba that you're going to take this to a consumer's rights organisation (you'll have to look for which one is best to take the issue to, I'm Canadian, so I don't know where one takes these issues to in other countries). Companies, no matter the size -hate- getting involved with these organisations, because they often actually do help the consumer. If Toshiba doesn't make any attempt to help you (and even if they do) go to the consumer rights organisation and work with them to see what can be done about it.
That's the path i'd take... I like my Toshiba... the fan died long ago, but it's only a P100 420CDT Sattilite Pro, so overheating's rare.
C: expect long load times
:)
What I'm expecting is a barrage of old jokes about their server running on one of those buggy laptops
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
I have no problems with it. Specs:
1.1ghz Celeron
256MB PC133
15GB HDD
14in LCD
$850US
It does get rather hot, but has yet to crash. I have left this thing on for days on end with no problems.
I think I got a rather good deal for the hardware.
This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
The box has a desktop processor in it. This information was widely known before you bought the box. The box performs AS ONE WOULD EXPECT, given the heat dissipation of a desktop processor. Sure, throttling back to less than half-speed is irritating. Sure, putting a desktop processor in a laptop is a dirt-stupid false economy. But all of this information was fully public before you plunked down the $2k, right?
And you want Toshiba to do what, exactly?
Sheesh.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
He bought a processor with a 1GHz+ chip in it. He did not pay for a 500 MHz CPU. It doesn't matter what little caveats he should or should not have dug up, buried deep in Toshiba's website.
He bought something that was advertised as working perfectly fine at its rated speed. It does not work at that speed. Toshiba needs to rectify this problem. It's that simple.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Sorry, unless the buyer is a computer tech they would not have reason to belive the "desktop processor" was, or was not, properly designed into the system as a whole.
"Stupid", or not, it may well be possible to design a laptop that could properly disipate the heat. The company indicated it had done so, and marked the unit 1.1G. GHz clocking specs aren't a marketing puffery, it is a material fact of the hardware. As such, a misrepresentation of facts is flatly against the law in most places.
Imagine a car that advertised 300Hp, but the air and exhaust design limited that 300Hp engine to 90Hp. In the US, the FTC forced recall would happen faster than they could print the legal papers.
Would it be acceptible if only the first 300 MB could be read by the CD-ROM drive?
Would it be acceptible if only the inner 6" of the LCD worked?
Would it be acceptible if only 64 MB of RAM was functional?
Speed is often a luxury, but in many cases it is a necessity. Sometimes increased speed can mean increased productivity, in which case the speed loss results in decreased productivity. Get Toshibas attention. Calculate the amount of time you spend waiting for processor limited activities and send Toshiba a bill for the time you would have saved had you used a faster processor. You most likely won't get the money, but you just might get an offer to return the product for a refund.
"that burst into flames without warning" - they're not bursting into flames they're just overheating due to poor ventilation. At 75 degrees it cuts out anyway.
Video Game cheats, hints a
I had a temperature of 65-73 Celsius during a test gaming session of DarkAgeOfCamelot
You must've really been into that game...
but you should've gone to a doctor with a fever like that!
I recommend that you DO NOT say anything too loud on their "support" (if you can call it that) forum, or else they will threaten legal action (nice guys!).
Mine was delivered STRAIGHT FROM TOSHIBA with NO operating system installed. Which may sound delightful, but of course, this is a serious mistake if you consider the "blood" contract that Toshiba has with M$. So....
The laptops are NOT made by Toshiba (not sure if they make any of their own). And they really don't care if it works or doesn't work for you. The laptop uses ACPI which is a real big pain unless you are married to Redmond binaries. Lots of things do not work with Linux on this laptop and it is unlikely they ever will. Things like: Power Management, Firewire and IrDA. Also, you will not be able to simultaneously see the local display and a display on the external VGA and you will NOT be able to switch back in forth with Linux (again, I think it is probably an ACPI issue).
However, I admit, I love being able to show off accelerated 3d using the unit in Linux.