Toshiba Satellite A355-S6943 16.0-Inch Laptop Review

I bought this machine a month ago because its hardware config looked good at a good price, I thought. I thought I can live with Vista, maybe upgrade to XP7 later this year. I rated it highly at Toshiba's web site and here at Amazon. Now, after a month's experience, I have buyer's regret.

Toshiba's pricing strategy of near-zero pre-loaded software (Vista only) means a lot of the cost of ownership is 'shifted forward' meaning you have to buy almost everything, including a bluetooth stack. This is an excellent example of nickel and diming customers to death -- not a good marketing strategy.

This machine does NOT come with bluetooth support, you have to add a dongle. But I thought that like Windows XP SP2, Vista has the stack included. Sadly, no, it is not true. The situation gets worse. Toshiba does not use the 'standard' Windows stack but has a proprietary stack. If it detects a non-Toshiba dongle, the Toshiba OEM license expires. You have to uninstall the Toshiba stack and find/install a compatible stack. Sigh.

It gets worse. I was pretty unhappy that I was unable to install the official Microsoft Office Suite. After going a few layers deep in hardware configuration dialog boxes, I find that the CD-ROM driver is in error, it could not find a fix and, maybe this is a separate problem, the system cannot detect the drive!!!!! No driver download available from Toshiba's tech support web site. Talking to a live agent, she pointed me to a secure site where I was able to download a filter that seemingly fixed the problem. This is NOT the way a new PC should be. I have never encountered such a problem before, in 20-some years of using computers.

I now rate this PC only 2 stars because of the stupid Toshiba policy of NOT including a free to the end user, perpetual end user license to its bluetooth stack. The CD-ROM driver problem worsened my opinion. BTW, a third-party driver diagnostic program detected 26 out-of-date or erroneous drivers.

Toshiba's stupid marketing made two more bad mistakes:

1. The license to the stack is for the manufacturers of bluetooth dongles, not for end-users like me, so end-users are at a dead end. I suppose I could buy a new dongle that has a Toshiba license instead of using the dongle I already own.

2. End users who are not IT-savvy won't know what the hell this licensing esoterica means. There is no link from Toshiba's 'expired' message to ANY help for end users to solve this problem. On Toshiba's user forum, the question "How to buy a license..." is posted, but 'locked' so no one can post comments. There is NO ANSWER given, such as "buy xyz dongles because they have the necessary Toshiba license." That's a missed opportunity to co-market with OEMs that have bought a Toshiba license. I've searched the web and THERE IS NO ANSWER elsewhere.

Fortunately, I know that BlueSoleil, a vendor of bluetooth software, will support the dongle that I already have. After registration, I downloaded BlueSoleil 6, a stack that does all the things that the Toshiba stack does. And it doesn't seem to conflict with the Toshiba stack which I did not uninstall. Unfortunately, BlueSoleil is available for free for only a 15-day trial after which BlueSoleil will transfer files of up to 2 MB. The good marketing practice demonstrated by BlueSoleil is it gives you a link to its online store where you can buy a license for $29.99. They help you to solve the problem, not like Toshiba.

I am shocked and disappointed that Toshiba, a well regarded consumer electronics brand, does such a poor job of end-user marketing and support.

Oh, while I'm at it, let me warn you that Toshiba tech support, while free, is NOT AT ALL KNOWLEDGEABLE. F'instance, I called to say that I couldn't find the pre-loaded free trial of Microsoft Office. My call got dropped, no call-back. Had to go through the n-level deep voice messaging, call another number, again, to get to another random support person who suggested searching the hard drive for hidden sectors. The software was there. AND, after hassling the guy for a recovery disk, threatening to talk to his supervisor, he said he'd waive the rules and send me one. A month later, no disk arrived. Finally, a friend told me that that I don't need to buy Toshiba's recovery CD because the machine has a utility for you to create your own recovery CD. Sigh.


Buy it here now!