- Oct 27, 2006
- 17
- 0
- 18,510
We just bought a brand new Toshiba Tecra S4 notebook. Price, about 3000 Canadian (with 2 gig of mem and blue tooth extension ARE YOU KIDDING ME card).
First of all can someone in this WWW explain me how da *&?% can a company sell a 3000$ computer with an "OPTIONAL" blue tooth module? This is the era of blue tooth enabled devices (think phone synchro with pc?! anyone?) and you are selling a top quality computer for 3000$ with an OPTIONAL blue tooth ad-on card. And you don't install it! The user has to do the job.
Second : the hard drive is mounted on a RAID controller but there is no way you can configure that RAID controller to act as a normal IDE controller. Because of this you have to give Windows XP the RAID floppy disk driver or it will not see your HD. Nothing special here, you just basically need to buy a separate 20$ IOMEGA floopy drive and it's done! Right? Wrong! Once you boot up with XP cd press F6 and so on.... (i'll skip the rest we all know the drill by now), after you just partition the HD Windows start copying the files on the HD but needs to access the floppy, SURPRISE the installer doesn't see the floppy drive anymore so can't install Win.
Now th funny part : calling 1-800-TOSHIBA there, a tech explained me for 30 minutes there is no other solution that the one I just exposed (oh yeah of course searching the KB on www.toshiba.ca gived me an doc with the whole thing in it). In this marvelous doc at somewhere it is mentionned : It is recommended to use a Toshiba USB floppy drive. As you guys can imagine the Toshiba USB floppy drive is 80$ can +tx and the IOMEGA is 20. At this point I was pretty pissed of so I ask the guy : " Can you guarantee is gonna work with the Toshiba floppy drive more then with my IOMEGA floppy drive ?" And the answer was - asked 3 times everytime he stated same thing : use the doc on web site - "Actually you got to try it at your own risk..." Any other solutions : "well you can restore from HD" Hello? I just formated the HD! Answer : "well then you need to return the unit to an authorized Toshiba dealer and pay for a reeinstall of Windows" !!!!
At this point it was pretty oblivious my vision of service compared to Toshiba's vision is not the same one!
Asked for the restore cd or dvd no chance in hell to get one!
luckily enough I made a ghost of the initial installation so I can go back.
So :
1 - Toshiba can't send you a freaking restore cd/dvd
2 - you pay 3000$ on a unit you have no blue tooth and if you buy the extension module well you gotta figure out how to install it cause there are no install instructions
3 - Even by following the infos on the support web site you can install or reinstall an operating system.
Other questions arises as well : what shall I do, if by a wild twist of fate I decide to install Windows Vista ? Do I have to send back the unit to "a Toshiba authorized repair center" just to get in a Windows install? What about the down time the user is going to experience ? Do I have enough "backup" laptops so I can give him one during this time ? Is it normal for me to pay for this ? Oh yea! Finally the version of Windows pre-installed on the notebook is one witch I need to activate, on the other hand, the version that I would have installed if someone at Toshiba was intelligent enough to figure this out was a corporate one, witch doesn't need activation!
This is totally dumb and stupid and I am totally disgusted with the way this company is treating me.
Oh just to let you know my boss think is not normal to spend so much time reinstalling this PC. He's an engineer, guess other engineers somewhere at Toshiba thought about this whole package and support strategy.
Now I really know I don't want to be an engineer.
Just another frustrated Toshiba customer.
First of all can someone in this WWW explain me how da *&?% can a company sell a 3000$ computer with an "OPTIONAL" blue tooth module? This is the era of blue tooth enabled devices (think phone synchro with pc?! anyone?) and you are selling a top quality computer for 3000$ with an OPTIONAL blue tooth ad-on card. And you don't install it! The user has to do the job.
Second : the hard drive is mounted on a RAID controller but there is no way you can configure that RAID controller to act as a normal IDE controller. Because of this you have to give Windows XP the RAID floppy disk driver or it will not see your HD. Nothing special here, you just basically need to buy a separate 20$ IOMEGA floopy drive and it's done! Right? Wrong! Once you boot up with XP cd press F6 and so on.... (i'll skip the rest we all know the drill by now), after you just partition the HD Windows start copying the files on the HD but needs to access the floppy, SURPRISE the installer doesn't see the floppy drive anymore so can't install Win.
Now th funny part : calling 1-800-TOSHIBA there, a tech explained me for 30 minutes there is no other solution that the one I just exposed (oh yeah of course searching the KB on www.toshiba.ca gived me an doc with the whole thing in it). In this marvelous doc at somewhere it is mentionned : It is recommended to use a Toshiba USB floppy drive. As you guys can imagine the Toshiba USB floppy drive is 80$ can +tx and the IOMEGA is 20. At this point I was pretty pissed of so I ask the guy : " Can you guarantee is gonna work with the Toshiba floppy drive more then with my IOMEGA floppy drive ?" And the answer was - asked 3 times everytime he stated same thing : use the doc on web site - "Actually you got to try it at your own risk..." Any other solutions : "well you can restore from HD" Hello? I just formated the HD! Answer : "well then you need to return the unit to an authorized Toshiba dealer and pay for a reeinstall of Windows" !!!!
At this point it was pretty oblivious my vision of service compared to Toshiba's vision is not the same one!
Asked for the restore cd or dvd no chance in hell to get one!
luckily enough I made a ghost of the initial installation so I can go back.
So :
1 - Toshiba can't send you a freaking restore cd/dvd
2 - you pay 3000$ on a unit you have no blue tooth and if you buy the extension module well you gotta figure out how to install it cause there are no install instructions
3 - Even by following the infos on the support web site you can install or reinstall an operating system.
Other questions arises as well : what shall I do, if by a wild twist of fate I decide to install Windows Vista ? Do I have to send back the unit to "a Toshiba authorized repair center" just to get in a Windows install? What about the down time the user is going to experience ? Do I have enough "backup" laptops so I can give him one during this time ? Is it normal for me to pay for this ? Oh yea! Finally the version of Windows pre-installed on the notebook is one witch I need to activate, on the other hand, the version that I would have installed if someone at Toshiba was intelligent enough to figure this out was a corporate one, witch doesn't need activation!
This is totally dumb and stupid and I am totally disgusted with the way this company is treating me.
Oh just to let you know my boss think is not normal to spend so much time reinstalling this PC. He's an engineer, guess other engineers somewhere at Toshiba thought about this whole package and support strategy.
Now I really know I don't want to be an engineer.
Just another frustrated Toshiba customer.
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