I Am Officially Done With Toshiba. Worst Company Ever.

[OrlandoEastwood]

This is long, so bare with me or go to another thread. I got a Toshiba A205-S8516 laptop as a graduation present from my folks for college and business use since I'm also a filmmaker and I am using it for screenwriting purposes. The laptop was purchased on July 22, 2008 and when August rolled around I left for the big island of Hawaii and it all seemed good and such. I had got some DVDs from Wal-Mart (US, R1, NTSC) and also ordered some DVDs and VCDs from Thailand off eThaiCD.com (Thai, R0/3, NTSC/PAL) as birthday presents.

The US R1 DVDs were Alone in the Dark Director's Cut, Clerks II, House of the Dead Director's Cut, Rodan/War of the Gargantuas, and Seed. I know that most of those are Uwe Boll films but I enjoy them for the mindless violence that they are. The Thai DVDs were Always: Sunset on Third Street, Always 2: Sunset on Third Street, Confession of Pain, Dolls, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla Vs. Biollante, Godzilla: Final Wars, Horton Hears A Who! (English Language VCD), I Am Omega, and Speed Racer (English Language VCD). I got the Wal-Mart DVDs first.

I put Seed in first because it was one I had not seen. As the disc loads up this loud, scary as hell, whirling, spinning noise is heard. I mean this is LOUD. So I push down as hard as I can on the power button to shut it off. So as confused as to what happened, I turned the power on and quickly pressed the eject button on the disc slot to get the disc out.

I then try War of the Gargantuas, it played fine. I thought it was odd that the Seed DVD did that. So I try House of the Dead Unrated Director's Cut, same loud as hell scary noise. So I was like "What the hell?" Alone in the Dark Unrated Director's Cut, SAME GD THING!!! Clerks II, fine. So I tried the Thai VCDs and DVDs, the VCDs worked fine. So I tried Dolls, played fine. Always: Sunset on Third Street, LOUD NOISE. I tried the three Godzilla DVDs, fine. Confession of Pain, fine. I Am Omega, fine. So the last DVD in my set was Always 2: Sunset on Third Street, LOUD SCARY NOISE!!!

So I called Toshiba's technicians from India or where they might be in Asia and they had me delete an upper and lower filter in a driver folder and then to restart the laptop and to try the DVDs in question that were not working. I throw Always 2: Sunset on Third Street because the opening of the film has Godzilla in it and I've been wanting to see it desperately. I put it in and the noise is a million times worse and to make matter even worse is that right as I hold down on the power button to shut it off, the laptop will not shut off!!! I had to hear this loud, horrifying noise for over a minute. So I break down and loose it while talking to this Toshiba technician because he made it worse. I mean the DVD screwed up Windows and I had to reformat the system. So I take it to a repair shop called The Computer Store here in Hilo, nice people who are Toshiba approved to fix their products operate here.

I take it out there on my birthday to get it analyzed. Their diagnosis says that the laptop is perfectly fine but they go ahead any way and have the disc drive replaced. They call Toshiba to order a new drive and it takes me almost the whole month of October to get the laptop repaired. I take the DVD for Seed and the new drive DOES THE EXACT SAME THING! The guy told me that it's the disc and take it back. It's been the 30 days, I cannot return it now.

A few nights later the people who live beside me want to watch some movies because I was talking to them when I had gotten my package from Thailand and told them it was movies. So they saw the DVD copy I had for Seed and they were all wanting to watch it. We played the DVD on an XBOX, not a 360 but a regular XBOX and the disc loaded right up. I was amazed. So I finally got to watch the movie. And a week later I had left for Honolulu and took back all of the DVDs I got. The one's the did not work loaded right up on my desktop computer I have at my parents house. They worked on my mom's computer and worked on all the DVD players in the house. This damn laptop is cursed by the devil, Satan, himself.

November rolls around and one day when I wake up on a Saturday, I turn the laptop on and go to take a shower. I come back to my laptop after I got done and dressed and noticed it was turned off. I touch the laptop and it is HOT AS HELL! It was on for no more than ten minutes and it over heated. I was like "What the hell!" I called Toshiba concerned as hell about this because this thing is now a ticking time bomb. So I was asked to remove the battery which helped kinda but it's still overheating and shutting off.

And I decided to get a Blu-Ray external drive for Christmas and I had called a Toshiba technician and asked in advanced if this laptop can play Blu-Ray discs from an external drive. They told me "Yes". WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! I ran a diganostic from Cyberlink BD Advisor and I am nowhere even close to having this thing play a Blu-Ray disc and the only three Blu-Ray discs that work are Black Mask, Constantine, and I Am Legend. The other 4 I have with those do not work properly or at all.

Then these past couple of weeks I noticed that the DVD disc drive has been acting up and just making the loud noise with any of the DVDs that I have been putting in it. So Disc Drive #2 is shot and I've been using my external BD drive to play DVDs. And I called Toshiba and there ain't jack to do about replacing this laptop so I devised a strategy of calling them everyday until they give in and replace my laptop. I've had it fixed once but I am not going through that hell again. I want to be rid of this laptop COMPLETELY.