Toshiba recalls overheating and melting Satellite T-series notebooks

The attention to build quality has gone for a toss. Crap is being dished out at massive rates from the sweatshops in China. Glad Fujitsu still gets it done in Germany and the result speaks for itself.

 

The problem is, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu and all the others outsource many of their products, especially power supplies and batteries and they do this to reduce costs for us the consumers. But they don't watch (like a hawk) these providers nor, apparently, do they perform sufficient quality control testing of enough samples.

I love my Toshiba (different model fortunately) but these reports don't instill confidence. But name a brand that has not had problems. You can't. Don't think Fujitsu is immune - they've had their problems too, some as recent as last December - Fujitsu recalls.

 

I am afraid if I may have come across as assuming that Fujitsu has no issues. I of all persons know better than that. I have been a victim myself. But, that said, the quality of components picked by Fujitsu for their notebooks is great. I always follow the approach where after singling out a potential buy, I check out the driver download page to see what components actually constitute the machine. For e.g I avoid ALPS touchpads like plague. For Linux machines, I avoid Atheros wi-fi cards. I prefer Realtek over conexant for audio and so on. And here I have found Fujistu to be impeccable. The reason I picked on Toshiba here was that the local Toshiba service center is right across the street where I live. I talked to some guys who work over there - they themselves asked me to avoid Toshiba because Toshiba has two distinct portfolios - the one they sell in US and the one they sell in India and other developing countries. Latter is utter trash where only the chassis design is supplied by Toshiba and nothing else.

 

That's interesting about the two profiles. I suspect that practice is not limited to Toshiba.

But to that, that is much of the reason I don't like the entire notebook category of computers. With a PC, if so inclined, you can build yourself and thanks to the ATX Form Factor standard, you can pick and choose from 10s of 1000s of parts to build the machine that has what YOU want - not some proprietary box you can't open without special tools and a strategically placed tongue; not some box you can't open to expose the interior for proper cleaning; and not some box you can barely upgrade, or if you can, you most likely have to buy from a single (read: expensive with limited options) source.

The drive to build the thinnest and lightest with the longest lasting battery is good, but it creates a proprietary situation on consumers which means nothing but inconvenience and higher costs. We need an ATX type standard for notebooks so we can build our own notebooks - but I don't see that happening.