Hi, everyone:

As you might all know, recently, two of my old TOSHIBA laptops died. Among them, the very notorious M35X which has a power cord failure that costed me $75 to fix.

Now again I am trapped with another problematic TOSHIBA. The latest A215 series.

There are numerous people reporting the "black-out death" of this computer. Basically the computer screen will go pitch black at any moment no matter what you are doing or what software you are running. I didn't know about this problem when I first bought it. But then once I opened the box, a large print-out says "DO NOT RETURN TO STORE!!!" jumped out as the first warning.

After 5 weeks, I have had this problem twice. Reboot is the only way to go, many said so in different furoms. TOSHIBA tech help can do nothing. Of course, I knew that too well after my M35X incidents. It seems to me that TOSHIBA by far have no way to fix this problem.

But what I want to ask here is: what would you rather do?

From my own experience, when thousands of users reporting powercord problems about their M35X, TOSHIBA held a massive recall. Or, only to those who complaint. When I started to have the same problem, the CSR told me it's too late to catch up with the free recall, but they are going to fix it for me for free, but eventually charged $75 from my credit card.

I couldn't decide whether to call or not about this black-out problem on my new A215. They would definitly ask me to bring the computer to Dorchester, the Boston Gangland, to have those Toshiba-certified street technicians to look at my computer, and probably charge me big bucks.

But if I don't call, or don't bring it to the repair center, they would say I missed the recall and refuse to fix it.

I am stucked.

Help please?

I don't understand, if it's new and under warranty, why not have them replace it? You can call Toshiba tech support to get a case number before going to the local repair center, and they shouldn't charge you anything. That's what I did when I had a customer's Toshiba repaired under warranty and it was no problem (except getting back down there, 45 minutes away - grr).

I don't see a Toshiba authorized repair center in Dorchester anymore. I searched on their site and see Waltham, Andover (too far for you), and Bellingham. You can also mail it in, again via the 800 number support line.

my toshiba laptop was under warranty and fixed for free at an authorized toshiba repair place. I called up the 800 number first and they took all my info and told me where to go.

they changed out a couple parts. didn't cost me a thing. It did take a couple weeks to get resolved because they changed out more than 1 part. The only issue i had was that they re-seated the keyboard incorrectly and some of the keys didn't work. So, i had to go back to get them to install it correctly.

Other than that it was as very pleasant experience.

And if you don't like the toshiba service center they forward you to, ask them if they have a different one that you can go to.

The center in Dorchester is no longer there? Nice! Theose guys scared me badly last time. They forced me to give them my wallet and pull my credit card out. Boooooo for them.

I see that in many product packaging these days. I ignore it and go to the place of purchase.

I'm no big fan of BestBuy, but a few years ago a client purchased a Toshiba notebook - a BF deal at the time. Within a few months the bottom half of the screen started going black. Went to BestBuy and instead of trying to fix it under warranty they exchanged for a comparable model. I was very surprised.

Note: Within 2.5 years the replacement Toshiba died. I'm certain that without regular maintenance it would have died much sooner. Back in the 90's Toshiba used to be the market leader in notebook PC's. It hasn't been that way in many years and I feel their product is sub-standard....same with Compaq. I say this because of all the issues I've seen with these brand notebooks. Granted they're lower end models, but with care and maintenance I would expect more than a couple years use of of them.

I would agree with Alan about Best Buy - I had bought mine from there, and the folks at the 800 number said I could also exchange it there for a new one.

!!!!