Toshiba Satellite A75 – nothing but problems?

About 3 weeks ago I received a comment from a user who described his experience with Toshiba Satellite M35X. Today I got one more for Toshiba Satellite A75. Even though these are completely different models, they have very similar problems: laptop heatsink gets clogged and the laptop overheats, improperly grounded top cover causes the laptop to freeze up and reboot, badly designed DC jack causes the power failure. May be your experience is more positive?

I got the laptop as a Xmas present from my boyfriend in Dec 2004. Shortly after I got it, I got the blue screen of death. Then it began freezing up on me. Toshiba told me this was a problem with a grounding wire in the motherboard. I took it to a service center and they fixed the problem. Within about another 2 months, it started doing hard shut-downs when any load was present – was unable to burn DVDs, view DVDs, play music or even view basic graphics on the internet, as well as shutting down during use of Windows Media Player. The fan was loud! Then, the AC adapter problem. To this day, I have no green light showing at all on the front of my computer. It was fine at first, then started flickering (when I pressed down on silver plate that was replaced at the service center due to the grounding wire problem), the green light would come back on for a short time and then disappear again.

The laptop is getting power while plugged into the wall and the battery is recharging…..but, what’s up with the green light disappearing?

I have a cooling pad underneath my Toshiba that has an external power source – overheating is NOT the problem with this computer. From what I can surmise, the issue is in the CPU. The motherboard probably needs to be replaced and God only knows what’s causing the problem with the LED indicator.

At this point, my computer is now out of warranty, however, because I brought these problems to their attention during the warranty period, they have essentially issued a blank check for me to have “any hardware problems fixed” as an exception to the warranty. They were too quick to authorize this, so my feeling is that these problems are systemic with this model and Toshiba is well aware of them, though why they have never issued a recall is beyond me and does not bode well for Toshiba’s PR department.

It is going in for repairs tomorrow (had to back everything up in case the motherboard has to be replaced) and I will advise what the findings are when I get it back – estimated time for repairs is 2 weeks.

If this computer were not being fixed on Toshiba’s dime, I wouldn’t bother paying to have it fixed – I’d just buy another laptop. I am very upset that I’m unable to use this laptop for any of the features they advertise. I also strongly suspect that Toshiba knew of these problems beforehand and sold the things anyway, looking for Xmas windfall revenue – this computer was introduced in Dec. 2004, if memory serves correctly.

What a sad indictment of corporate greed – this laptop was $1,500 – we’re not talking about a pack of gum, here.

Is your experience with this model any different?