Toshiba P50 Laptop

Never buy a toshiba laptop

A year ago, I bought a Toshiba P50-A laptop and have had nothing but problems.  i7 processor, 12G RAM, Blue-Ray DVD player, 15″, 1TB HD.  After loading up my programs and data, I found that the lit keyboard wasn’t lighting.  Tech support had me do a complete restore, wiping all my programs and data, only to find they had omitted that feature in error.  Therefore I had to re-setup my pc all over again.  Then the email didnt work, could not connect via network to my Vista pc, so had to do another full system recovery.  Then the Toshiba webcam didn’t work, which was solved with an easy download.  Wireless did work but the network ethernet connection did not.  I analysed the heck out of it, and finally determined it must be the NIC card…. but to have that fixed on warranty they would have to do full restore, again wiping my HD, plus I had to ship the computer back, leaving me without it for 2 weeks.  So I figured I will just use wireless off my router.

Then about 6 months into my ownership of this Toshiba lemon, the blu-ray DVD-ROM stopped working.  It would not acknowledge cds, dvds, and not play dvd blu-ray movies.  To get it repaired under warranty would require sending it in (10-14 days without) and them doing system restore wiping the HD.   This was quite frustrating since swapping out a DVD-ROM is incredibly simply.  Two screws and it pops right out.   They could have sent me the replacement.  I found the cost of a new one to do it myself was $410 with shipping, whereas I could buy a portable DVD player for $35 on Amazon.  Again a worthless Toshiba warranty considering what one must go thru to take advantage of it.

Now most recently, the battery icon is warning me to replace the battery, plus its not recharging back to the full state.  So I turn the piece of junk over expecting to find a hatch to get at the battery and find that the genius’s at Toshiba have made it not accessible.  Its inside the unit.  So… every time you need to replace the battery (and that appears to be every 12 months) you need to tear apart the laptop or if under warranty, send it back to Toshiba to replace … and wipe your hard drive.. thank you very much.  🙁  Incredible.  If I open the laptop, I void the warranty, otherwise I would have sent it to the repair facility without the hard drive.

The Toshiba website is also built with frustration in mind.  I could not even find a place to order the battery, or the replacement blu-ray player.  Or easily find out how to open the unit.    They sent me to National Parts, which was somewhat helpful.  I will never, ever buy a Toshiba laptop or any Toshiba product ever again!

Follow up:  I ended up sending my laptop in for warranty on 10/27/14 and got it back 8 days later on 11/4.  I had to pay $30 for the shipping FedEx and a special box, but that did make it easier than packing it up myself.  I pasted a note on the laptop saying not to run restore and if they felt they had to, then to call me first.  They replaced the dvd/blueray player and the battery and left my HD intact.  The battery warranty was only for a year and actually I had called it in a week or two after that 12 month period, so I appreciate them replacing it at no cost.  Part of the reason it went bad so soon was because I should have been running it down at least monthly, which I hadnt been doing.  I didnt realize this till after the fact and reading some documentation.  All in all, the warranty process was good, except it would have been better if there had been a local shop I could have taken it to, rather than mailing it.

Author: Geoff

Quick rundown: Grew up in Lombard, Illinois, went to Arizona State University, worked as a CPA with Arthur Andersen & Co, then Laventhal and Horwath, then Rolling Stones, then Heron International, then Goodby Berlin and Silverstein in San Francisco. Moved to the foothills in 1990 and traded futures and designed websites. Married to Kate Stewart, now living in Colfax, CA. We have six grandchildren. I enjoy camping in our RV, hiking, kayaking, fishing, droning and cross country skiing Also conga drumming, photography and dogs.

3 thoughts on “Toshiba P50 Laptop”

    1. The OS works just fine, using Win 7. Its the hardware thats the problem. Lousy engineering on the part of Toshiba. If I’d have bought a ASUS I wouldnt have had this problem. My mother has a MAC and she got the new OS, so now she hardly uses it. She hates it. I find it counter-intuitive. Simple tasks seem so difficult to do. I guess because I am unfamiliar with it, but that would be why I feel its not intuitively designed.

  1. Hi,

    Bought my Toshiba Satellite L50 on the 21st of January 2015. I will following describe major quality defects:

    1. Battery: have had to unscrew and screw the battery to flush the power in order to be able to turn it on. Have done that twice.

    2. Chassis: the chassis is way too flexible, not solid. If I try to grab it by the corner where the DVD is located while it’s running, the laptop’s chassis starts to bend and the DVD starts making weird noises.

    3. DVD not mechanically sealed properly, leaving gaps in between, giving way to dust entering the DVD itself and therefore having to cleaning more than would be normal.

    4. Screen: if you look sideways to the black surface surrounding the screes, it doesn’t look like a uniform surface.

    Compared to the HP Presario I had previously, the Toshiba is miles away in terms of quality.

    Won’t buy again this brand.

    Will never buy at DICK SMITH ROSEBUD PLAZA either, they fooled me into it knowing it had quality issues).

    NOT RECOMMENDED.

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