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Glad to hear it. Their support and drivers are horrendous; I was left with a mostly useless $800 laptop because the wi-fi wouldn't work after a Windows "upgrade

Glad to hear it. Their support and drivers are horrendous; I was left with a mostly useless $800 laptop because the wi-fi wouldn't work after a Windows "upgrade" (I've since switched to GNU/Linux and never looked back).

hedora 8y ago
Our last (ever, I guess) toshiba had the motherboard go out. They replaced it under warranty with a different board with different components. The new board didn’t work at all with linux. Windows sort of worked, but was unusable for reasons that escape me at the moment (kernel panics, maybe). Way earlier, I had a 266MHz satellite. That was great, though I think the power brick went out a few months after warranty, and they wanted >> $100 for a new one, so I had to buy third party.
chipperyman573 8y ago
It's interesting that your solution to a hardware issue was to change to Linux. I tried Linux a year ago and eventually switched back to windows because everything Just Worked. I would sneeze two towns over and something random would break with Linux (Mint/Cinnamon). n=1 of course so I might have just had some wonky hardware or something.
- fhood 8y ago
  Linux can be an absolute bastard where drivers are concerned, but Windows actively fights you when you try to modify the drivers. Windows is more likely to work correctly out of the box, but if it doesn't it is a bigger pain in the ass to fix.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    On Windows, all I've ever had to do is try different driver versions. On Linux, I've run into multiple problems where the story is "broken, many people have the same problem, there is no cure, maybe if you want to spend a week wrangling ACPI code you can figure it out." I wouldn't call that a smaller pain in the ass.
    - herogreen 8y ago
      In defense of Linux, motherboard manufacturers often sit on the ACPI standard and are satisfied with only having Windows working correctly.
ansible 8y ago
Not to knock running Linux on your laptop, but... It is still fairly common to have the WiFi on a small mini-PCIe card slot, so it is usually possible to open up the laptop and replace it with one which has a better driver. I don't know how common it is now, but some laptop manufacturers would also put in firmware checks, so that only the WiFi that was factory installed would be recognized. So even if you can physically replace the WiFi, it might not work. All I'm saying is that it may be worth investigating if you or anyone else runs into that sort of problem.
- robocat 8y ago
  Except in my experience some laptops don't allow the WiFi (or other devices) to be changed.

hedora 8y ago

Our last (ever, I guess) toshiba had the motherboard go out. They replaced it under warranty with a different board with different components. The new board didn’t work at all with linux. Windows sort of worked, but was unusable for reasons that escape me at the moment (kernel panics, maybe). Way earlier, I had a 266MHz satellite. That was great, though I think the power brick went out a few months after warranty, and they wanted >> $100 for a new one, so I had to buy third party.

chipperyman573 8y ago

It's interesting that your solution to a hardware issue was to change to Linux. I tried Linux a year ago and eventually switched back to windows because everything Just Worked. I would sneeze two towns over and something random would break with Linux (Mint/Cinnamon). n=1 of course so I might have just had some wonky hardware or something.

fhood 8y ago
Linux can be an absolute bastard where drivers are concerned, but Windows actively fights you when you try to modify the drivers. Windows is more likely to work correctly out of the box, but if it doesn't it is a bigger pain in the ass to fix.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  On Windows, all I've ever had to do is try different driver versions. On Linux, I've run into multiple problems where the story is "broken, many people have the same problem, there is no cure, maybe if you want to spend a week wrangling ACPI code you can figure it out." I wouldn't call that a smaller pain in the ass.
  - herogreen 8y ago
    In defense of Linux, motherboard manufacturers often sit on the ACPI standard and are satisfied with only having Windows working correctly.

ansible 8y ago

Not to knock running Linux on your laptop, but... It is still fairly common to have the WiFi on a small mini-PCIe card slot, so it is usually possible to open up the laptop and replace it with one which has a better driver. I don't know how common it is now, but some laptop manufacturers would also put in firmware checks, so that only the WiFi that was factory installed would be recognized. So even if you can physically replace the WiFi, it might not work. All I'm saying is that it may be worth investigating if you or anyone else runs into that sort of problem.

robocat 8y ago
Except in my experience some laptops don't allow the WiFi (or other devices) to be changed.