My screen backlit module died after 9months, replaced under warranty, shortly after warranty is over the LCD screen is flickering and lossing colors.
I noticed Toshiba cheated by providing non-intel and non-ATI based motherboard. ATI 9700/9800 with 128 mb ram supports vista but the interface between ATI video and AGP motherboard processor is based non-ATI or non-intel chipset. Therefore it is customized for Toshiba only. If I knew this I would have never bought this laptop. Toshiba should have disclosed this in specs. I was thinking I was purchasing intel based ati video interface.
I have also found a disclaimer on CPU not taking advantage of some high-end intel capabilities.
Toshiba failed my expectations, therefore I would never nuy another Toshiba. I prefer to buy “cheap” Acer and use it for 1 year and buy another one.
It is not Microsoft’s or ATI’s fault, it is Toshiba’s who does not want to write the driver because they know their product is not as good as it should be and also
their strategy is to sell us another expensive laptop. I would have understood Toshiba’s position if P30 was a entry level laptop.
I do not recommed Toshiba. Buyer beware their laptop’s chipset is not 100% intel. Do not pay premium for Toshiba and do not trust Toshiba. Buy Lenevo (previusly IBM) or Acer.
PSP30C-MH100E
Toshiba Satellite P30
Mobile Intel Pentium® 4 3.46 GHz
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9700 128MB
Memory RAM 2GB
Hard drive: 80GB upgraded to 100GB
Vista Performance index: 1.0x (boo to Toshiba)
Vista driver for ATI SMBUS Driver is not provided by Toshiba only works in XP.
without things like the ATI smbus driver installed the P30 wont perform well, I did get all this sorted only to be thwarted by my TV card drivers so i went back to XP and installed a Vista theme which looks and feels like vista without all the headaches including all the new tools and look, so who needs vista, on top of this all once you get over the obstacles you’ll find alot of software wont work on vista machines.
My conclusion was that give vista a wide birth for 2 years by then its should be far better.
Overall the Toshiba P30 is a beast still compared to current laptops with 3.2 GHZ but is let down by its hardware support, also gottaadd that the DVD drive sucks, no support once again, have never managed to burn a DVD faster than 2X DVD RW does do 4X and toshiba has no interest in supporting this hardware, it also has issues with the cooling fans that get blocked, so if you getsudden shut downs you may need to open up the machine and clean them out then regularily use the vacumm vigarously on the fans and make sure you you prop it up slightly to aviod issues. Slightly gone off subject!!!.
P30= great laptop Toshiba= Totally sucks support, I probably wont buy one again simply because of their tech guys laziness. ]]>
Quite good really, got to get over the fact that toshiba is so slow with fixing this problem.
Think it’s something to do with the agp not being recognized. ]]>
For my own sake, I did not bother trying to contact Toshiba on this issue. I figured that they’d tell me it came with XP on it, so go away. I am surprised that AMD wouldn’t want to solve the issue though. It’s them that needs to provide the driver, and their reputation that should be most at stake in this. This isn’t the first time I’ve had issue with an ATI card, and may be the last time I buy a machine that sports one.
Personally, I don’t like the thought of a daily bluescreen on shutdown, so I’ll avoid the previous drivers. If anyone does hear about an updated one that actually works for the P30, though, I’d love to hear about it. 
The only solution i found was to run the mobility xp 6.5 drivers. I get the resolution fixed however no areo and i get a bluescreen on evry shutdown. Its a good tradeoff for me as i can run my applications good with this one. The bluescreen on shutdown is not such a big deal (as long as you dont use sleep mode too often as it doesnt work with the bluescreen).
Im fighting with amd right now to get some sort of decent reply but im getting throwned over to toshiba because they didnt get any sort of deal together to modify their drivers.
Quoting amd’s tech “Dear Customer,
Notebook manufacturers and our partners (Sapphire, PowerColor etc) that license our products can modify the specification and drivers.”
Im hoping that at some point in the future, they will just hit the bug without knowing and some drivers will fix it (lol but i think im dreadming here hehe).
]]>it’s SO FRUSTRATING AND GHEEEEY….I mean c’mon…this isn’t really an obsolete laptop (2 years yeah…but faster than many laptops) and either m$ or amd needs to get their act together and FIX THIS ISSUE…I’m almost certain my next laptop is NOT going to be a toshiba and am 100% certain it’s NOT going to have an ATI graphics card….this is one peeved ex-loyal customer
]]>yeah, toshiba won’t get back to me either, which is unfortunate because this is my 6th!!! toshiba notebook, (infact I have a newer one making number 7) I enjoy the stability of the machines and have never had a major hardware problem infact I still have a notebook from 2000 which operates like it was new.
I guess this explains why this is the first time I have found they have HORRIBLE tech support. I think this lack of support will be enough for me to look at other manufacturers.
]]>
Dennis, it’s interesting to know that your experiences were similar. I, also would like to know why the performance issues. I really didn’t think my laptop was that poor a quality!
]]>As for drivers it will take some time before the vendors have catched up with Vista (in a similar way as with 2000 and XP).
I was very disappointed with the performance on my laptop (which I bought last year) and therefore re-installed XP after only two days. On my stationary developing machine Vista runs very well and I’m pleased with the performance.
I would like to know the technical explanation why the poor performance exist with laptops.
]]>Happy new year mate.
I totally agree with the UAC, I think it is a 100% rubbish idea, it will also make deployment a 100% pain in the tushy!
Also lets face it, in about 6 months every hacker in the planet will have a way around it. The story is simple, you can’t make computers idiot proof, the user has to know enough not to get caught out.
Shame to hear Vista is such a resouce hog, i think some of the things they are trying to do are good, but genrally the HW is not good enough to cope. – your not angling for a free laptop are you?