100 posts

I doubt anyone is reading the blog, after all it has been almost a month since I last posted anything on here. Anyway, today I am using the 100th post of the blog to talk about my horrendous relationship with Toshiba laptop computers.

A couple of years into grad. school I bought a Satellite Pro laptop to replace the aging Gateway laptop I had carried around in undergrad. The Satellite Pro A65 was a bit on the hefty side, but it was a decent laptop. As a grad student, spending $1200 on a laptop was no easy task, but I enjoyed having the flexibility to take all my work files with me. That laptop lasted a year and 1 month. 1 month past warranty the battery leaked battery acid onto the motherboard and completely killed the laptop. I was able to recover most of my files by purchasing a USB hard drive case and spending some quality hours on Google finding out how to take ownership of my hard drive (let's just say that if you have a profile in Windows that is password protected you cannot just go back and get to files under My Documents).

So, about 3 years ago, November of 2005 to be exact, I stupidly replaced my acid-leaking Toshiba with........another Toshiba, this time a Tecra A4. Now, I should rationalize my purchase by saying that a good chunk of the decision came down to me getting good financing from Toshiba, while the folks at Dell wouldn't. I loved the laptop. Compared to the bulky Satellite Pro, the Tecra was sleek. Besides, I loved the all black keyboard and case and the silver lid. Not too fancy a laptop, but it looked efficient and rugged.

One thing I did learn from Satellite Pro fiasco was that you should get the extended warranty with your laptop, which I did. So, a year and a half into my Tecra A4, the freaking hard drive dies. And I mean dies. The computer thought the BIOS was password protected, when it wasn't. After talking to the Toshiba folks, who were quite responsive and nice, I brought the machine in to a Toshiba service center where I was informed my hard drive was dead and a new one was provided as part of the extended warranty agreement.

This leads to today. On the tail end of a horrible scince day, my laptop crashed. I plugged in my USB key to transfer some files and the thing would not restart. I spent a solid 3 hours of my afternoon getting to the point where I could simply start the machine in Safe Mode so that I could backup as many files as possible. Luckily I have 2 months left on my warranty so I called the Toshiba folk who promptly told me I should try to wipe my HD clean and that if that fails I should call them back so that I can take the computer in to a dealer.

All in all, good times with Toshiba computers.