Are Toshiba laptops bad?

Even so, they are better than Dell

The best of the whole bunch is definitely Apple laptops, followed by HP. Avoid Dell because of poor quality, non-existent service (both tech support as well as customer support).

Because of the prior decent reputation that Dell enjoyed, we (our family members) purchased two laptops about 4 years ago. Dell knowingly shipped these 2 laptops with bad motherboards, and gave us the runaround regarding repairs (within 2 months of the 12 months warranty period). Finally, we got fed up and paid an independent tech who replaced the motherboards. The tech told us clearly that Dell was aware of these defects and in spite of that, knowingly shipped the products.

I found Dell's tech support people from their call centers in India to be arrogant and "know it all" types. In more than one instance, the Indian tech support closed the case without resolution, in order to make themselves look artificially good.

Tech support (India) does not have to be this bad. The tech support I got from Linksys's Phillipines techs was excellent. (Linksys had jumped the gun and shipped a wireless card without driver support for Win 7).

Dell's US Customer service, along with a US based tech, tried to resolve the problem, and empathized with me. But their help cannot, and did not solve the most issue with a certain Dell desktop, GX-620. Blue screens occur on a DAILY basis. Even after re-installing the OS (XP professional) multiple times, blue screens occur. With NO other programs installed, the message I get is that some "driver" is bad. The 2 Gigs of RAM is new and tested good.

The only use for this Dell computer would be for training purposes for computer techs. Where else can one find a computer with different problems every day?

This is what prompted me to read-up, join Tom's Hardware, and build my own i7 computer. Seventh month running with ZERO problems. Thank you Tom's members!

I believe that most people would claim that Dell's service started to go downhill somewhere in 2005 or so.

This story would put it a little before that, however.

All in all, anecdotal evidence is neither here nor there. Seemingly company-wide indifference to the customer, on the other hand, is kind of hard to bounce back from.

I also wonna add that some of the laptops from HP and DELL experience problems with graphic cards.
I bought a HP laptop 2 years ago and it failed recently due to nvidia defect (inheritly defective) the repair shop says a lot of people who buy DELL and HP laptops experience those problems and normally they are out of warranty by the time it fails... but you can take it to the court which is a long process.

I am not saying all laptops have that problem but you just gotta be carefull what your buying, ask around people and do a good reserahc before you go buy a laptop.

agree

Building is usually for desktops - you are better off buying a new pre-built laptop; other than Dell!

I am going to be a college freshman this fall. Every computer my family has owned has been built by either myself or my father so I am not sure what brands to trust. I am looking for something 13.3 or smaller (they are lighter and easier to lug across campus). About that EeePC: I am going to avoid the atom like the plague. I hear it is very low performing...

http://www.microcenter.com/single_ [...] id=0337358

This is the Toshiba I am thinking about purchasing.