Toshiba A85 laptop....buyers beware!

I found this site while surfing the web. Thought it might be a good place to voice my opinion.

Last night, I bought a Toshiba A85 laptop. All excited about my new purchase, I get it home, plug it in and had problems with it from the word go!

It froze up during the "new computer" set up in Windows XP. I walked away and came back to it later. It took 3 hours just to complete the setup when you plug it in!!!

This morning, I got the blue screen of death and an error message saying "Hardware malfunction". It then went to "Complete memory dump".

I called Best Buy where it came from and the guy that answered told me to "bring it in and they'd have a look at it". I fully intend to bring it in.......don't really care what the heck they do with it!!! I plan to demand a refund and will NEVER buy anything with the Toshiba name on it again!!!

I've NEVER had this many problems with a computer before. This was my 1st laptop purchase and now I'm not so sure it's worth the hassle of owning a laptop.

UGH!

 

It sucks that you had such a problem with your first laptop.

It sounds like unfortunately you got a "lemon", which does happen on occasion, with almost every piece of electronics I've ever seen/owned.

My advice, take it back, if you liked what it was supposed to be, and can't find anything else wrong (Toshiba do seem to have slipped quite a bit in recent years as to the quaility of there builds) then I'd say just take another one from the store (just return the original, and then get a replacement) and give that a try, if you still have huge issues, maybe try another brand (maybe the A85 has other inherent issues? I don't know, as I don't own one).

Laptops are good, but remember 3 years or so is generally considered "reasonable" life for a laptop, and I personally would always recommend the extended warrenty since if anything does go wrong with the laptop it'll probably be at least $400 to repair (new motherboards seem to run around $600, new screens more than that!)

 

Gypsee,

I agree with Arla. I assume you liked the unit (other than the issues you had) since this was the unit you decided on, then maybe it's worth giving it one more chance. It's just possible you got a lemon. You may even want to have them take it out of the box for you and power it on (shouldn't take more than 30mins to get fully setup). Once everything is working, take it home with you and you're set.

I also strongly recommend getting an extended warranty for the unit, but not from Best Buy. Make sure you get it from the manufacturer as this will allow you to take the unit to any Toshiba repair facility around the world. Getting the Best Buy or whatever retail store warranty is only good at that retailer, so you have to bring it back to a Best Buy location for repair.

-Vb-