Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Processor Problems w/ Toshiba s504 & s507 Laptops?

Posted by Cliff on from the when-hardware-manufacturers-don't-own-up dept.

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?"

2 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Um, no. by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?"
  2. Acceptiblity by CmdrTaco+(editor) · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Some people here seem to think it would be acceptable if they bought a system that did not work and the "solution" would be to run the computer at less than 1/2 its advertised speed. What if this applied to other parts of the computer?

    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.