Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I have around 100 Satellite Pro 6100's used by medical students. I
have over a 50% failure rate on hard drives--and climbing. And a 40%+
failure rate on AC adapters--and climbing.

Toshiba has been completely unresponsive. We have warranty covereage,
but I can't keep up with the replacements so that the students don't
have to wait for a new drive to come in.

Is anyone else seeing these types of problems with the 6100. I'd like
to hear from you and trade possible Toshiba contacts and/or I have 100
med students who'd be very interested in a class-action lawsuit at
this point.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"km" <wmarti@lsuhsc.edu> wrote in message
news:a532e76.0411150946.c729783@posting.google.com...
|I have around 100 Satellite Pro 6100's used by medical students. I
| have over a 50% failure rate on hard drives--and climbing. And a 40%+
| failure rate on AC adapters--and climbing.
|
| Toshiba has been completely unresponsive. We have warranty covereage,
| but I can't keep up with the replacements so that the students don't
| have to wait for a new drive to come in.
|
| Is anyone else seeing these types of problems with the 6100. I'd like
| to hear from you and trade possible Toshiba contacts and/or I have 100
| med students who'd be very interested in a class-action lawsuit at
| this point.


Hi km -

A quick search on Google (search keys: Toshiba, 6100, Hard Drive and Failure
results in hundreds of hits.

http://tinyurl.com/4g2fy (link to Google search I did)

Jef

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

wmarti@lsuhsc.edu (km) wrote:

>I have around 100 Satellite Pro 6100's used by medical students. I
>have over a 50% failure rate on hard drives--and climbing. And a 40%+
>failure rate on AC adapters--and climbing.
>
>Toshiba has been completely unresponsive. We have warranty covereage,
>but I can't keep up with the replacements so that the students don't
>have to wait for a new drive to come in.
>
>Is anyone else seeing these types of problems with the 6100. I'd like
>to hear from you and trade possible Toshiba contacts and/or I have 100
>med students who'd be very interested in a class-action lawsuit at
>this point.
I have been through 3 hard drives so far on my 6100. Excessive heat is the
problem. To slow down the failure rate:
1. Get the fan.exe program at http://www.buzzard.org.uk/toshiba/fan.html and
keep the cooling fan running at all times. This may solve the problem in
conjunction with 2. below if the room is not too warm
2. Set the Toshiba Power Management to keep the CPU temperature down: CPU
control to "auto"; Cooling method to "Battery Optimized"; Power/HDD off to
whatever your users can stand (I use 10 min and 20 min).
3. If failure rate is still too high, get notebook coolers like those at
http://www.buy.com/retail/product. [...] c=101&sp=1 .

And 4. Make sure you have a frequent backup for each computer with something
like Acronis True Image (www.acronis.com) so you can recover as soon as the new
drive is popped in, or transfer the work to another computer until then.

Haven't had problems with the AC adapter, but cutting down the power usage
should help that too.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

On 15 Nov 2004 09:46:20 -0800, wmarti@lsuhsc.edu (km) wrote:

:>I have around 100 Satellite Pro 6100's used by medical students. I
:>have over a 50% failure rate on hard drives--and climbing. And a 40%+
:>failure rate on AC adapters--and climbing.
:>
:>Toshiba has been completely unresponsive. We have warranty covereage,
:>but I can't keep up with the replacements so that the students don't
:>have to wait for a new drive to come in.
:>
:>Is anyone else seeing these types of problems with the 6100. I'd like
:>to hear from you and trade possible Toshiba contacts and/or I have 100
:>med students who'd be very interested in a class-action lawsuit at
:>this point.

Actually it is not a 6100 problem. The Toshiba 4019GAX (40GB/5400RPM) and
the Toshiba 6022GAX (60GB/5400RPM) hard drives used in many Toshiba models
in addition to the 6100 have had a much higher than normal failure rate.
This is based on info from a good friend who is the service manager at a
Toshiba Premier ASP. Both of those drives have been updated and the new
ones seem to be holding up normally. However, it seems that Toshiba must
have a big inventory of the old part numbers since he says that what they
keep getting for replacements under warranty.

As for the ac adapters he told me that adapter is used in quite a few models
also and they have seen almost no failures on them. Could you possibly have
a "dirty power" issue where these laptops are being used?

me/2

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Thanks for the replies and suggestions. I'd started looking into the
heating problem with some temp software on a few units; they're running
consistently to the 130F and often 140F.

I'll definitely try out your suggestions, but I'm not happy with the
idea of work-arounds for obvious design flaw failures of a product that
I'm going to support for 4 years and is warrantied by Toshiba for 4
years (which is of little use while waiting for your HD to be
replaced).

Problem is that my users are medical students in a computer-integrated
curriculum. These are heavy users, round-the-clock, for study, for
communication. They are also a very patient and adaptable bunch, but
it's unfair to them and embarrassment to us to say "here's all your
study materials online, but you better print it out because your
computer will overheat if you actually use it for study."

BTW, both HD and AC adapter failure rates have passed the 50% mark and
I'm beginning to see keyboard-mouse failures. It's time for Toshiba to
step-up to the plate.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Hello,

I had my 60GB hard-drive crash on my -SECOND- Toshiba 6100, ~7 months
ago. My first Toshiba 6100 had many hardware problems. Many parts
were replaced: LCD, power board (inverter), CPU board (twice), and
others I can't even remember.

Toshiba just wanted to keep replacing parts, but finally I wrote a 25+
page letter to the corporate offices of Toshiba, and they gave me a new
6100. It didn't take much of an imagination to come up with 25 pages
-it was all basically documentation from MANY useless, desperate phone
calls to Toshiba.

When ever I talked with Toshiba they acted like I was the -only- user
with these types of laptop problems.

When my second 6100's hard-drive crashed, it cost me ~$1100.00 to have
a company extract the data from the bad drive -that this is actually a
cheap price. Yes, you can believe I back-up my drive every day, now (I
should have been doing this before).

If you need any documentation from me, just let me know.

thanks,
George H.
12/08/2004 7:32pm ET

km wrote:
> I have around 100 Satellite Pro 6100's used by medical students. I
> have over a 50% failure rate on hard drives--and climbing. And a 40%+
> failure rate on AC adapters--and climbing.
>
> Toshiba has been completely unresponsive. We have warranty covereage,
> but I can't keep up with the replacements so that the students don't
> have to wait for a new drive to come in.
>
> Is anyone else seeing these types of problems with the 6100. I'd like
> to hear from you and trade possible Toshiba contacts and/or I have
100
> med students who'd be very interested in a class-action lawsuit at
> this point.