How long does the average Toshiba Laptop last?

Well I have a Tecra 8100 (PIII, 600MHz, manufactured in 1998-1999) that I still use daily. That's with daily use & transort between office & home, fieldwork (carrying it in a backpack while hicking, in 4WD trucks down poor roads and then measuring in the field for periods of up to 3-4 hours at night with the screen covered in mist (mostly saltwater spray friom the sea) and have only had minimal problems. The FL inverter for the LCD (which was fixed as a recall type situation by toshiba) and I had a RAM slot come loose (apparently pretty common in various models from this generation incl. my GF's Dell Latitude).

Just last august I sold my even older tecra 520CDT (P 166MHz +MMX, manufactutured in 1995) which still ran perfectly (apart fromt he 'h' key not working). As far as an average for toshibas, it's hard to say. The tecras are designed using "prooven" technology for longer lifecycles. Which basically means they are made to last longer and take more abuse, but you won't be getting the latest & greatest in technology. Just take a look on ebay and you'll see tons of old tecras for sale.

As for the Satelilltes, they tend tend to be made more for the home user. I've never had one, so I can't really comment on them. I am VERY satisfied with my tecras (despite their age) and my next lappy will be another tecra.

I bought the Tecra 520cdt refurb'ed in july 1999. The tecra 8100 i picked up used in august 2003 just after the 3 year waranty had run out, so it was originally purchased in july/august of 2000 (as a matter of fact, I'm typing this post on it right now).

how long is a piece of string?? How well do you look after it? I have seen a couple notebooks that are 2 months old and it looks like the owner has dragged it down the road for 15 minutes on a piece of string. I have seen one where they spilt a drink all through a week old notebook. I have seen notebooks caked in dust after a year. Some people do really look after them though and it's easy to tell.

Once Toshiba's were super reliable and you paid for it, like the old Satellite Pro's (4200/4300 and 4600 series to mention a few) and the old Tecra series.
But then to compete with the cheap crap on the market like D***, Toshiba had to bring out cheaper models otherwise people won't buy them. With cost cutting comes quality cutting, it's impossible not to. Fact is some Toshiba's, Dells, HP's, etc probably come out of the same Taiwanese (or whatever) factory. Bottom line is you get what you pay for.
You have these super low cost computers on the market and they fall apart, but then again some high cost models have had their issues as well.

In any situation, always buy the extended warranty. You have 3 years of use without needing to worry about spending money fixing it unless you have some sort of mishap and may damage it. Some people say they only build appliances (of any type) to last the warranty period these days, so I guess anything over 3 year is a bonus but a majority of people will get more time out of it. A few unlucky people will have dramas though after 3 years.

Sudds;
I dont understand what you are trying to get at??? Are you looking for a lifetime guarantee. If you were to take 10 exact same laptops, you would undoubtedly get 10 different expiry dates.
There are lemons in every piece of merchandise regardless of brand or model.
As was pointed out by Toshrepair, it is totally dependant upon how well you look after it, what kind of use/abuse it is given and how many different fingers have access to it. Still there is no guarantee that it will last longer than the guy who hauls it around and doesnt look after it.
You takes your chances, like with everything else

I've owned eight notebooks while working for various companies, and I travel frequently, by plane, sometimes by car, always taking the notebook with me. Constant movement. One would think that lends to how long a notebook "should" live. I've had Dell, HP (twice), Gateway (twice), Sharp, and Toshiba (twice). All going through about the same rigors of travel.

They all last about the same amount of time before having failures and glitches, and this was between 24 and 28 months. Save one brand/model, a Dell Inspiron 3500 I had (and actually still use as an emergency backup).

It's like any other manufactured products, there are always some lemons, some poor designs. With cars, you never want to buy in the first model year so they can work the bugs out, but with computers, the technology moves way too fast, and models change monthly, so we don't have that luxury. Bottom line, you never really know what you are going to get. If you seem to have "success" with a certain brand, maybe you should stick with it? The hard part there though is, none of these mentioned companies really make their own computers, they are all Compal, Asus, Twinhead, Quanta and a handful of others that make the guts of all the "big brand" OEM companies. If you can trace the roots of the "real" maker of your best computers, you may be on to something.

Bottom line, hard travel, and simple "technology obsolescence" seems to relegate any business-use notebook PC to a realistic life span of two to two and a half years. I have an old Toshiba Satellite 1750 in the kitchen at home that my wife uses for email and the kids play on; it's about four years old, and really that is all it is good for. It never has moved anywhere, yet powering up on battery alone has failed! Hasn't worked since it was 14 months old! Design flaw? Poor component selection? Who knows? It's all a crap shoot.

I just ordered a new Fujitsu S6231 last night because it fit my criteria for what I would use it for, and it was 4 lbs, so light enough to haul around on my travels. Do I expect to get more than two years out of this new machine? Probably not. Life's a gamble... roll with it! Purchase a unit based on your needs, features, overall broadbased track record, and check out "epinions" to see if there is a pattern of negativity developing about a certain model. I almost ordered a Fujitsu C2330, but enough reviewers made the comment that it was "chunky" and noisy, and I think also that it may have had heat issues. Noise and weight were pointed out in almost every epinion. I see stuff like that, I will stay away.

Reliability under hard use

Well, I know that the company I work for used to use Toshibas for their field technicians. We're talking about 50 bilingual guys who work out on trucks all week, week in and week out, in every kind of weather. The techs tear the crud out of the notebooks, with their favorite way of destroying them being shattering screens, by shutting coffee mugs, and other objects in the notebooks. BUT, after those notebooks were 3 years old, the company bought Dells for all the techs (paying WAY too much for them). Now about half the Dell notebooks won't start up after 1-2 years of use, while most of the Toshibas still work fine after 5+ years!

So, my company prefers Toshibas over anything else as far as longevity goes, and they know how to destroy the best stuff. We've probably replaced more than 30 Toshiba screens in the last 5 years, while replace motherboards and everything else in our Dells.

-Ransom

What you want

No problem. I went through the same thing when I was looking to buy my 1st lappie. I remember thinking that a Sony Vaio looked good, and contained all the things I wanted. But then I saw the Toshiba with the exact same options for $400 less, and I went for it. I knew I didn't want a Dell at the time, but lately I've been hearing a lot of good things about them, so it all just depends on what you want, and on how much you're willing to spend.

Good luck,
-Ransom

The only Toshiba Ive had an experience with was my dads 1st laptop which was a Pentium 133 MHz machine... small stuff on it.

This machine I think is still functional (working) but ofcourse not heavily used.

the longest lasting laptop that i have ever seen is my dads first business laptop (very very heavily used although it looks almost new still), a compaq with an orriginal pentium 90mhz and a very small hdd... but that said i would say that most laptops have a lifespan of about 3 years which is about the lifetime of a desktop that the majority of the non-hardcore gaming public would be purchasing. the rule of thumb that i work on is that i plan to make my replacement every 3 years give or take a bit to my computer equipment, which if you purchase an extended warranty will be when your warranty is up anyway.

I have experience with toshiba, and the tecra line can take termendous abuse. several tecra owners that i know make frequent business trips all over N. America with their tecra in and out of planes, helicopters, you name it, and used in every environmental condition possible. they just purchased new tecra s2's and retired their still perfectly functioning 3 year old tecra s1's to the new people in their companies. that is a nice story and i think it generally speaks to the endurance of the tecra line but overall i would say that electronics is a crapshoot, you pay your money and you take your chances, any and i do mean any manufacturer can come out with a lemon. i just find that every toshiba i know of has lasted at least 3 years before any major trouble and toshiba has always been very good at handling any minor issues that occured. i recomend toshiba to alot of people as i find them to be the most reliable that i have used.

on the note of dell, i must asy i was very disappointed by the total failure of my dads new dell d600 when he got it just about 5 months ago and within 3 days of getting it, it had completely died. however dell did replace it with appologies and it has worked well ever since. thus proving that technology is totally open, and there is no assurances. the support impressed me, but the fact it died in the first place didnt. so really go with the brand that has the features you want and the style you want, and check up on the models reputations before you make your purchase. when it all comes down to it get the best 3 year warranty you can, with accidental damage coverage if possible and enjoy the system. for me i chose toshiba and i dont have any trouble recomending it to anyone at all

Mine lasted 2.5 years befre the grphx card died

I had a Satellite 5105-s501. Aparently these all die at around 2.5 years if they have the graphics card manufacturing defect (poorly soldered RAm chips on grphx card).