Toshiba lemon getting replaced

Hi All,

I am the (not so proud) owner of a Toshiba M35x-S149 that has been through the wringer repair-wise, having been in the shop 4 times since last April for frequent random unexplained shut-downs. Each time it was in the shop (once for over 6 weeks) it was "repaired" with a new system board. The last time it went in was over Thanksgiving, and it didn't last a week at home without starting to shut down for no reason yet again. Fortunately, when I bought this piece of junk for my kids I also invested in a 3 year warranty with accidental damage coverage - this has been the magic warranty, because Toshiba "customer relations" has authorized a replacement machine for me. Of course it has taken over a month to get to this point, but at least I am getting some level of satifaction here.

The way that the replacement works, apparently, is that I send them my system (FedEx'd yesterday) and then they call me up (I have NEVER actually gotten a call from customer relations, I ALWAYS have to call them and wait on hold for an hour, so we shall see) and tell me which refurbished units they have in stock which are most similar to the system they are replacing. They requested I send my computer back in its original box with all of its original packaging and accessories - all of which I had, but of course this makes me suspicious that they will take my horrendous monster of a system, polish it up, and ship it out as "factory refurbished" to some other poor sucker - and, of course, that my replacement system will be a recycled piece of garbage as useless as what it is replacing. My question is, is there anybody else out there who has gone through this process, and what systems should I look for as adequately reliable, as opposed to the M35x series which seems to have had very serious flaws.

Thanks in advance for your help.


Never mind - about an hour after I posted this the UPS truck came down my driveway with a box from Toshiba - apparently they didn't mean it when they said that they needed my computer in their possession before I would get a replacement, or that they would call me and let me know what my options were for comparable equipment from the refurbs in the warehouse. They must have shipped my new unit before I even shipped the old one back to them. If anybody is interested, what was in the box is a factory reconditioned Satellite MX45-S2652 with significantly better specs than my M35X-S149. Here is a link to a description of the replacement:
http://www.computerdealoftheday.com/...l-dvd-996.html

If it turns out to be a reasonably reliable machine, I am quite happy. If it is another lemon - well, I still have more than 2 years left on the "magic" warranty.

So far so good - the replacement laptop is a good step up from the M35x-s149, with its Centrino rather than Celeron-m processor, standard 512 mb of RAM (I had another 512 MB that I took from the old one and plunked in the new one), built in 6 in one card reader (we actually use 2 different card formats here with our digital cameras) and DVD writer (which I haven't gotten around to testing yet).

The only problem with the replacement machine is that the internal wireless card, the Intel 2200, was a real bear to get working smoothly, and I am hoping that this was why it was returned and refurbed in the first place. If you do a google search on this card you will find that problems with it are very common - in my case it was only connecting to my elderly linksys wireless b router at a very slow speed, which would steadily get slower and slower till the connection dropped. Searching all over the internet for every solution I could find led me to download the lastest Intel generic drivers, use the latest version of Intel Proset, disable wireless zero config, update the firmware on my router, and about 5 other tweaks. With each tweak the connection became faster and more stable - now it works great. As I said I am hoping someone else had issues with this card and the techs at Toshiba couldn't or wouldn't walk them through two days of trial and error tweaking to get it working.

Toshiba still hasn't transferred my "magic" warranty to this laptop, so I am on their case about that, and wont' rest until the new serial number shows the proper warranty type and expiration date on the warrenty entitlement look-up page. They say that should take about a week. However, overall I am satisfied that they resolved my situation adequately and would recommend that anybody else with that constantly broken piece of crap initate the replacement process if they think they are entitled to it. Without question the Systemguard part of my warranty was what led to the replacement, I was told that by three different customer service reps. So if you are planning on investing in a new Toshiba and extending your warranty beyond the original year spend whatever the additional amount is to get that coverage.

Good luck!