I hate toshiba

[kuolas]

Recently I was testing a notebook from toshiba, a Satellite C655, (Celeron 900 with GM45 chipset). So, from the specs it was 100% Linux compatible (Intel and Atheros chips with good Linux support).

First thing to do was fire up Ubuntu 10.4 Live CD and see how the lappie handle it. The boot process took ages and the WiFi did't work, first thought was that the ath9k driver had a bug. I downloaded 10.10 rc with no luck, then 10.10 daily build, not a chance, the computer was dog slow booting and with the WiFi not operational. Looking for solutions on this forum I stumble upon this: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.bugs.general/753151

Very intresting ideed.

So the problem is TOSHIBA, not a driver.

I posted a complaint on the TOSHIBA Forums, Guess what? they deleted my message.

http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/Deleted-by-Member-Moderators/I-want-to-say-I-hate-Insyde-BIOS/td-p/142704

Instead of saying "we will be fixing that out" or something, no they deleted the entire thread (before spreading out).

I never bought a Tosh, but came close to buy one.

I warn everybody to learn this lesson: maybe the specs are right but the BIOS might be unusable under Linux.

There's a lot of complaint on newer and older Tosh, so I don't recommend Toshiba to anybody.

[Dustin2128]

eh, my toshiba laptop works just fine under linux, but my experiences don't speak for everyone's. Though I really wish they would've made the keyboard a little bit sturdier; I'm missing 5 keys...

[Barrucadu]

Personally, I've had nothing but good experiences with Toshiba laptops. YMMV.

[nlsthzn]

My Toshiba Satellite worked well in Ubuntu 9.04 through to 9.10... never tried a newer one on it (my wife using it and clinging on to Windows for dear life)...

[lisati]

Although I've read of some people having problems getting things working, my experience of Toshiba has been good too. And the only time I've had to send mine in for servicing (for the keyboard) it was done under warranty, even though they didn't have to.

[andymorton]

I've got a Toshiba Tecra A9. It works flawlessly with Ubuntu. I can't get the wireless to work with any distro that uses KDE though, but I've got no idea whether that's the fault of the laptop.

andy

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Kuolas,

I have a Toshiba Netbook NB305 that works fine with Linux Mint 9 (Ubuntu 10.04). Looking at the website http://webapps.ubuntu.com/certification/, it looks like Toshiba Laptops are showing good Linux compatibility.

[nubimax]

I have a Toshiba, Fujitsu, and 2 Mac's I dislike all of them. as far as I am concerned there is no such thing as a good laptop.
M.

[kuolas]

From the 100% of unsatisfied customers, only 5% of that 100% complaint.
I complaint, and what they did? They shunned me in the official Toshiba forums. I've got feed up because of that. For that alone I will never buy a Toshiba (I don't care anymore if it works with Linux or not, now It's personal).

Toshiba or not Toshiba is not so important... what amazed me was that a "modern" BIOS had ACPI BUGs... what is this? 1998?

It's been a long time since I saw something like that...

I thought that the fault was the Insyde BIOS, but I've seen Acer machines with Insyde BIOS and no ACPI problems. (still I don't trust Insyde).

I've always relied on the spec sheet alone to know if a certain machine is or isn't compatible with Linux, But a buggy ACPI BIOS in 2010? That's crazy.

What happened if I buy the machine seeing the specs only? How many of us can test Linux before the buy? I cannot rely on specs only anymore.

[Shibblet]

I have a Toshiba, Fujitsu, and 2 Mac's I dislike all of them. as far as I am concerned there is no such thing as a good laptop.
M.

That's a fairly broad statement. I am curious as to what it is you don't like about laptops.

[inobe]

the ati gpu was the only trouble, that wasn't an ubuntu issue, the OS driver worked superbly, i tried getting the "proprietary" driver to work to have the control center, the proprietary driver was useless and busted everything.

besides that, i didn't need to configure anything, from wireless to skype "cam and mic"

i made a decent amount of cash that day, the customer was very happy, till this day they have not asked me where the ati control center was :P

[RainPhantom]

I have two Toshiba laptops and both are excellent computers. The older one purchased in 2000 still works perfectly. I have not had any problems with them and would recommend them to anyone considering purchasing a laptop.:)

[inobe]

I have two Toshiba laptops and both are excellent computers. The older one purchased in 2000 still works perfectly. I have not had any problems with them and would recommend them to anyone considering purchasing a laptop.:)

what you say is true but a fare warning for those looking to buying one, get one with nvidia graphics processor.

i mean the ati opensource driver is awesome but if one wants to play nexius or whatever 3d game, they will experience a loss in frame rates, google earth, blender etc...

an nvidia driver will install nicely without error.

[CarpKing]

I got a Toshiba Satellite this summer, and it has been pretty good to me. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the ATI open-source drivers worked on a laptop this new. I guess my WiFi didn't work until I upgraded my kernel the first time, but that's an Ubuntu bugfix, not a Toshiba error. The Conexant audio was the main Linux hiccup; I had to install the Linuxant driver from their website to get the earphones to mute the speakers. The touchpad is also a little jumpy, but I've never been very good with those.

[kuolas]

That's a fairly broad statement. I am curious as to what it is you don't like about laptops.

I'm quiet happy with my HP 530. I like the business class of notebooks, not the media oriented. But now I want a LED LCD, so that why I was testing out the Toshiba.

For me the best notebook ever built on earth was the ThinkPad, especially the T40: The last of the ThinkPad under the IBM umbrella, and the last notebook without the Windows key.

My heart was broken the day that IBM sold it's PC division, worst: Levono put the Windows key on ThinkPads. Oh! The humanity!

Anyway, going back to this topic, the affected machines are Toshiba's C650, there is, as for kernel 2.6.36, a new boot up option specifically targeted for Toshiba notebooks, it's acpi=copy_dsdt. It's not included in Maverick, and I don't know if it will.

Now the C655 runs with acpi=off, in the future it will be recognized at boot up and apply the workaround for the buggy bios.

[Lucradia]

A lot of Toshiba Netbooks also have a battery issue (related to some satellite batteries) where the battery will drain 20% or so of power over 8 hours of being turned off; but on windows, it doesn't do this.

[donkyhotay]

I had a toshiba satellite, never had any problems running ubuntu on it until the hardware itself finally failed (after about 8-9 years).

[Shibblet]

I'm quiet happy with my HP 530. I like the business class of notebooks, not the media oriented. But now I want a LED LCD, so that why I was testing out the Toshiba.
Brightness, and power efficiency. I hear ya. I've not messed much with Toshiba laptops, but I have had a lot of success with my netbooks over the past two years.


For me the best notebook ever built on earth was the ThinkPad, especially the T40: The last of the ThinkPad under the IBM umbrella, and the last notebook without the Windows key.

My heart was broken the day that IBM sold it's PC division, worst: Levono put the Windows key on ThinkPads. Oh! The humanity!
Yeah, I agree, those ThinkPad's were really nice laptops. IBM always thought in terms of "business". Which is why their machines were so reliable, and very operable. Lenovo has a more "sell to the masses" view of their product. They have changed it for the worse.


Anyway, going back to this topic, the affected machines are Toshiba's C650, there is, as for kernel 2.6.36, a new boot up option specifically targeted for Toshiba notebooks, it's acpi=copy_dsdt. It's not included in Maverick, and I don't know if it will.

Now the C655 runs with acpi=off, in the future it will be recognized at boot up and apply the workaround for the buggy bios.
Well, I'll throw my two cents out here on the netbooks that I have purchased over the past couple of years. Now, keep in mind that a netbook is not meant for any kind of "power-using", and really just for running basic apps, surfing the web, and such. You can't do much with a 1.66ghz Low-Voltage Processor.

I started with the MSI Wind U100, and it had a 10" 1024x600 WLED display. It was a great machine. And it will always have a place in my heart, because that was the machine that brought me to Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.

When I started using it on a regular basis, I was telling myself that there has to be a way to make XP run better on this computer. Search after search led me to Ubuntu.

Then I sold it, and got an MSI Wind L2100. This was a 12" Netbook with an AMD Low-Voltage Processor, and ATI Graphics. Well I don't think I need to tell you the problems I had with Ubuntu and ATI. So I sold it, and got an Asus 1201n.

This is the best portable PC I have ever owned. It has a dual core 1.66ghz Atom N450, Nvidia Ion graphics, and runs Ubuntu like a dream. It also has a 12" 1366x768 WLED display. For portability, and operability, I love this netbook.

Although, I don't know if it classified a netbook or a notebook...

[matt-d3]

I'm quiet happy with my HP 530. I like the business class of notebooks, not the media oriented. But now I want a LED LCD, so that why I was testing out the Toshiba.

For me the best notebook ever built on earth was the ThinkPad, especially the T40: The last of the ThinkPad under the IBM umbrella, and the last notebook without the Windows key.

My heart was broken the day that IBM sold it's PC division, worst: Levono put the Windows key on ThinkPads. Oh! The humanity!

Anyway, going back to this topic, the affected machines are Toshiba's C650, there is, as for kernel 2.6.36, a new boot up option specifically targeted for Toshiba notebooks, it's acpi=copy_dsdt. It's not included in Maverick, and I don't know if it will.

Now the C655 runs with acpi=off, in the future it will be recognized at boot up and apply the workaround for the buggy bios.
Hi, I am new to these forums so please forgive me if I'm posting this in the wrong place.
I recently purchased a Toshiba C655 with Win 7 pre-installed with the intent of switching it to Linux. I've had good luck with the quality of other Toshibas that I have owned and the price for this model was right.

I haven't been able to get it to boot the Ubuntu 10.10 live distro from a USB drive that I have setup using unetbootin or universal usb installer.

You mentioned setting a boot option to acpi=off. I've never set boot options like this when booting from a usb device, I guess that I've been lucky so far. What is the impact of running the OS this way? Will there be any performance or run time battery issues?

The bios on my C655 is version 1.2 which Toshiba support indicates is the latest version.

My thanks for your help and please feel free to correct me if I haven't used the forum correctly.

[nubimax]

@ Shibblet key boards to small for my big hands, screens too small for my poor eye sight. every time I try to use one something happens and I go to blank screen and lose every thing that I have typed. has something to do with my big fingers. the misses has no problems with them.
M.

[kuolas]

With the latest BIOS from Toshiba and the latest Ubuntu 10.10 you need to turn off ACPI. Toshiba ACPI implementation is buggy, makes your USBs and WiFi unusable. The next major kernel version will have a patch for the buggy Toshiba bioses... So, for now, you are screw.

[Grenage]

I have nothing against Toshiba, but I am rather curious as to why a thread based on "I hate Toshiba" is left open, and a thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1606909) asking why Macs are frequently recommended, is locked.

(Attacks and derogatory terms of any kind are not welcome.)

[4ll41]

First Ubuntu 7.04 that I tried to my Toshiba Satellite a210 was a disappointment. No wireless, graphic card problems with or without proprietary drivers, plus laptop was freezing at random points with no obvious reasons. Later versions of Ubuntu (8.04 till 10.04) overcame these problems and work well with it.

Generally though, my experience says that Toshiba's quality is really poor. Screen plastics, screen hinges, screw bases, all broken plus charger stopped working within first months I bought it. Not to mention the numerous users that have overheating problems and the high cost Toshiba charges for a cleanup.

+1 for the thread.

[MoviesBlaster]

I dont know why but i also hate Toshiba