HCL - Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 Series

Poor product quality & reliability of the product. I bought Toshiba laptop model C640 . But after using it for a month or so Its Left hinge started malfunctioning. I lodged complaint with the company & they took 3 days to respond. The engineer who visited after 3 days said that the hinge is not covered under warranty..

He also confirmed that there is not physical injury on the laptop.But asked me to pay Rs 2000/+tax for the replacement of the part.

My complaint no. is 062312-86 dt 25-6-2012.

I have only one question with the Toshiba people that if a part starts malfunctioning with the manufacturing defect .Then customer should not be forced to pay for it. So I request all my friends to check the quality of Tosiba Laptops & avoid purchasing this.

Ramesh Kohli

Advocate

P38 pdc which serial number is 3094ax313695. Everybody knows that all laptop company gives only 1 year guaranty or warranty, I accept it but this HCL laptop got short circuit yesterday and if within 2 years any Laptop will have problem like this then consumer will have thinking that product's durability trust may be only for 1 year, not more than that. So I do not any recommendation for this product as already have seen too much problem in this.

This laptop belongs to pepl who hrdcore user of laptop and at sam tym lukin fr rough m/c .vry easy to use no huzzle puzzle . bt as far as luk concern ....bit boring ...and da sped of da processr jst awsm....i hve ben using ds 12-13 hrs a day since 2 yrs n no issue for serivce n quality it's jst go on...his competbilty wdh othr device jst g8...comper to vaio n hp ds z gud one so da price tag z got I dnt thnk anyone hve issue to have da g8 machine..

n real valu of money so ..jst go fr it.!!!!

My review isn't about this particular Toshiba model, it is about the model I have, the  Satellite L30. The L30 is now obsolete; if I put my review in the L30 category, no one would read it and benefit. I just felt that it would give people a useful  idea of what Toshiba the company is like with its laptops if I wrote in the section for a more recent model.

Toshiba's products are always more poorly specified, for the money.  When I bought this for Rs.27, 000 in 2007, there were laptops by HP and Lenovo  for the same price, that offered a larger and better screen, a better optical drive, a  larger hard drive,  more RAM, a faster processor and a larger battery - for the same price.  I still went and bought the Toshiba Satellite L 30, because I heard that Toshiba offered better quality, even if there wasn't much in quantity. That hasn't really proven accurate though.

By the first six months, the lid had warped just a little bit (bent concave);  the lid locking device therefore didn't stay tightly in contact in  the holes in the bottom half. If you closed the lid and put the laptop into hibernation and traveled with the laptop, the lid would move a millimeter or so because it was the bent and this movement got the computer started.

Then one day after the one year warranty expired, the optical drive died.  Shortly after, the battery began to give me no more than a half-hour's backup.  I had both replaced.  Then,  unfortunately,  the fan began to make a lot of noise too.  I  took it to the HCL-Toshiba  authorized service center in Noida near Delhi, and they said that it would cost Rs.2500 to replace. Like a fool I agreed to this, and they took two months to order a fan and get it ready.

When I went there to pick it up, I found that the screen didn't really look like my original screen.  There was a section of dead pixels(the size of a mustard seed) at the top center of the screen that I never saw before. I questioned them on this, and demanded that the waive my exorbitant service fee for having damaged my screen. They tried to claim that it wasn't their fault; but I insisted that I be compensated, and they agreed to waive  a large part of the service fee.

Now that I am back home and using the laptop, I find that there is two things wrong with it. First, they seem to have installed the fan incorrectly,  because the CPU keeps overheating and shutting down.  I'll have to go back for that.  And secondly, I have the suspicion that they stole my screen, and replaced it with a defective screen.  I feel this way because  before I gave it to them, the laptop screen looked fine when viewed direct at eye level. Now, the image is very dark and unviewable when seen held directly at eye level. It only looks acceptable when viewed tilted forward.

I can't imagine one reason to recommend Toshiba's products.  They are unnecessarily expensive, poorly specified, they have no durability, and their support and service are expensive and of very low quality.  And their driver download page, only lists obsolete drivers(and the driver web page doesn't work a lot of the time).

I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it!

Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long.

But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it!

Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long.

But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking... I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking...

I wanted to write a review on my laptop since long. But I resisted because I really wanted to see it pass through my grueling hands before I wrote about it! Finally, when Kishore mailed me asking about the laptop, I decided to write down the review. So Kishore this one’s for you!

Okay! Now let me mention what my laptop to offer to us:

TOSHIBA SATELLITE PRO 4600 SERIES

Specifications

Pentium-III 1 GHz Mobile processor

256 MB SDRam

30 GB hard disk

Yamaha Sound Card

DVD-CDRW combination drive

87 key, key board, pointing stick for a mouse

Wireless LAN enabled ( 802.11b-explained later)

Ethernet (10/100 Mbps) card built in

Software modem

16 MB 4x Trident AGP video card.

15” XGA display.

Win 98/ Win 2k pre-installed

A free printer!!

The mandatory floppy drive

Batteries!

2 USB ports, TV out, line in, mic, one serial, one parallel port

2 PCI card slots.

A few words

At the very outset its clear that this laptop is a robust machine! With a 1 GHZ Pentium, and 256 MB ram, there is hardly anything you could ask for more. Though I must commend MICROSOFT for making Windows 98. Even after such a configuration, the boot up time doesn’t even show the slight difference!

One good thing about the laptop is it is wireless enabled. What it means simply is if I have a wireless environment, then I can do away with the wires and be completely mobile. Its fun to boast this feature in front of my friends by using it in the college here!! About 802.11b, this is a standard currently implemented by industry, which allows speeds of 10 MBps over wireless environment. Though this feature might seem a luxury to begin with, I seriously recommend this feature as a necessity now.

The display is superb! The 15” screen doesn’t make it feel like a laptop. Add to that, a decent graphics card doesn’t disappoint either. In-fact with a robust graphics processor, the DVDs are crisp and clear. The audio is fantastic, though I would have loved to have a SoundBlaster card inside!!! The graphics card gives a decent performance in games, but it is nowhere what NVIDIA graphics cards are able to give. Some of Toshiba’s other models have the card, but then you got to pay a price too!

The built of the model is good. The antenna for wireless reception is located right on top, and is integrated with the body. The advantage with this system is that it offers excellent reception quality. The size is around 2” thick, which is pretty big for a laptop.

One bad part is it weighs 7 pounds ( roughly 3.5 kgs) which is pretty heavy, and carrying it could be a weighty task! But then as this laptop is more of a desktop alternative than a mobile station, it is understandable!

The laptop comes with 2 USBs and with it you can connect almost anything and everything in a jiffy. The TV-out enables the laptop to be used in combination with TV, and its fun watching DVDs like that. There are 2 expansion slots, so if any need arises it can be done by adding cards.

On the battery, the laptop is able to sustain itself for 2.30 hours nearly. Its not much, but then its not bad too! The laptop offers two modes of operation…one is performance optimized and the other is battery optimized. The battery optimized version runs quite slow, and could cause a lot of problems with office applications!

One of the things difficult about the laptop is the mouse. Unless you get used to it, its pretty difficult to manage a pointing stick! But once used to it, its a breeze...and now I prefer this to a touch screen!!!

Hardware/Software

The software included the mandatory recovery CD which ships with all branded computers. In addition to that, Toshiba has included good amount of software though I would have loved to have more of them! I mean, the laptop comes with Real Player basic 8, but they could have given us the full version! Any how, now here are some interesting things about the software:

The recovery CD or the installation CD ( as it is called ) allows you to restore your system if anything ever goes wrong ( and if its Win 98, it will and it will!). The worst part of the installation is that it installs Windows 98 in a FAT 16 mode ( I hope the techies understand the stupidity here!!) for no apparent reason at all! Then it creates another partition of FAT 32, something which I haven’t been able to figure out why the installation CD does it.

The other CDs belong to the DVD software, and one for the CD-RW software. The software for CD-RW is Easy Creator CD software, and its one helluva software. The CD-RW speed is 4x…which is pretty slow, but nonetheless its there!

The laptop also allows memory expansion upto 384 MB ram…which is more than enough for anybody!!

The BIOS allows a user to enable a hardware lock the laptop so that no one can do mischief with it…its one feature which I personally like to have.

The laptop comes bundled with AOL for three months…but the service of AOL leaves a lot to be desired.

Customer Service

Isn’t this important! It is, and I must say honestly, Toshiba hasn’t been too good at that. First of all they messed up my laptop order, and in spite of paying extra for a quick delivery, I didn’t get it any sooner than I would have got otherwise. And then in-spite of clear instructions to make 5 partitions of my hard-drive, they still shipped it with one HUGE 30 GB hard-drive! If they didn’t intended to do it, then they shouldn’t have offered to do it in the first place!!!

The technical support needs to improve. I had called them up to enquire about why the damned software installation installs in FAT 16, but they had no clue why it did that!!

There are actually two types of technical support available. One is called Ask Iris which is on web, and is normally good enough to solve most of the problems. However you need to contact them if your problems are not solved.

I don’t know how they service internationally as I haven’t got the opportunity to do it. Until something drastically goes wrong with the laptop, I don’t think I will be able to comment on that aspect of their service! On the whole though the customer service is just about okay.

Final Words

To put the laptop in a nutshell…its GREATTT! But then one should really decide as to what you want out of the laptop. This is certainly not a business laptop, rather it is a desktop alternative. Secondly, the pricey price makes it a little costly, but then its got a configuration to die for!! All in all, its definitely a great laptop to keep!

Do I recommend this product…Definitely YES!!