Toshiba Settles Class Action Suit

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."

Comments

" that could get me up to $1000 back"

[Squalid05]

"UP to $1000.."
..i'm sure it wont be that much, more like $150.

Re:" that could get me up to $1000 back"

[Sad Loser]

you could buy a secondhand real toshiba with that.

I have had real toshibas for the last 9 years and they last well and are spectacularly well made (especially my portege 7200s, which I still use with linux), and I have bought over 20 for other people. Now waiting for a yonah powerbook.

There is one check that you must do though to make sure you are not buying crud.
Turn it over, and read the bottom. If it doesn't say 'made in Japan', just walk away.

Real toshibas are made in Japan, the consumer crap is a toshiba label on some OEM crap, as you have found out!

CNET rating 7.8 "Very Good" - why?

[digitaldc]

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?

[Sockatume]

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.

Simple explanation

[Andy Dodd]

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.

$1000 is just a down payment on a mac

[aka_big_wurm]

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)

Re:CNET rating 7.8 "Very Good" - why?

[Generic Guy]

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 markets advertising on the review site. Not producing "nice enough" reviews gets you moved to the bottom of the list of people to recieve the next intresting product (or off the list completely). Again, this ties into sites which rely on the vendor to supply the preview/review wares.
• Lack of real-world testing. I can't tell you how many times I've been frustrated by reviewers who look at a product in the most basic lab-like conditions (gee, its shiny!), but fail to comment on reliability or real-world usage issues.

When the "editor" product review varies that heavily from user reviews, you can tell there is a problem -- not just with the product but the review process as well.