Toshiba to Close the Book on Its Laptop Unit
wsj.com
wsj.com
Luckily it was the only Windows boot and being all Intel it ran Linux flawlessly.
Why is it so hard for a laptop maker to not completely fuck up software? Plain Windows with no OEM additions other than actual drivers would be welcome.
No wonder Apple goes from strength to strength.
the demand for $400 laptops means you gotta sell out somewhere, sadly. the first thing i always do when a family member gets a new laptop is ask to see it first thing so i can format and reinstall windows. some of those oem-added bloatwares are downright toxic
Your annual bonus depends on whether that number moves up or down and you believe that most people decide what computer to buy by sorting by price. What do you do?
OEMs mostly don't want you to do apples-to-apples comparisons of models between retail stores, but the last time I put the effort into the math it seemed like almost exactly a $50 premium from the bloatware model to the Signature Edition version of that same model.
Destroys the illusion.
Hello, open source citizen revolution.
The question is not why laptop makers bundle crapware, but why frivolous and user-hostile design decisions are considered acceptable in the Windows PC space as a whole.
I've given up.
With what? If you use a standard Windows image, it won't activate. If you use the manufacturer's recovery procedure, all the crapware comes back.
On the old days we got bundles at the local shop, now you get them on the hard disk.
I hate this business model as I'm sure most other folks do as well - but it's instructive to understand that it's not just online services like FB that rely on it. It's infested hardware, media, pretty much all parts of our consumer life... give it time and the corporate adlords will infest government/city services as well. Ads everywhere, minority-report style.
No competition: Windows is the default in Japan, and they make the meat of their money there, by selling overprices laptops at 2-3 times the price they sell overseas. The typical electronic stores in Japan are full of japan-made computers and you only get a small Lenovo corner and that's more or less it. There must be either tariffs or import rules to protect domestic companies, so they have absolutely no incentive to serve the end user or to make anything remotely valuable. And the crapware installed by default is just another monetization strategy.
A friend bought one and it was roughly as advertised. The only non-Windows things on it are the drivers and a handful of utilities that come with the drivers.
I guess you haven't tried the keyboard on the latest MacBook Pros.
In fact, the last remaining Windows PC in my apartment (the rest are Linux now) is an old Toshiba Qosmio[0] behemoth from 2010 or so running Windows 7. I keep it around for some apps I use on occasion that don't run especially well on WINE. I'm not sure what I'll do when that thing finally dies.
Dual-boot
Of course, I did spend a couple hours after the first installation to uninstall bloatware, and upgrading the BIOS, and after a while I installed more RAM… but after that it was a good ultrabook which even had a physical Ethernet port!
I also liked the fact that it was 1.4 kg IIRC, and with a battery that lasted all day so I didn't have to bring my charger on the go.
I can't comment on their Windows targeted laptops, but this chromebook is my least regretted purchase so far.
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14679
It's sad because Toshiba was credited on the ACPI specification documents so how they messed things up so bad I don't know.
To this day, the Toshiba I own currently only works with Windows 7 and Linux. No support for any of the BSDs.
Granted most Japanese makers are horrible on the software side, but Toshiba felt specially handicaped in my opinion.
Toshiba laptops are purchased a lot for governments and large corporations. So they might be trying to focus on that.
But, the article says that the Toshiba laptop section is being sold to Sharp, which is controlled by Foxconn, and that Foxconn wants to:
"Sharp executives say Mr. Tai believes Foxconn’s know-how in assembly and connections in the technology business can make the PC business profitable at Sharp"
So they're giving it a reboot under the Sharp name, and maybe not focusing on government or corporate sales. Interesting.
So it's not really related to the perpetually prophesied "end of pc era" that the tech media has been waxing poetic about since the first iPad release, it's because Toshiba's having financial troubles.
The Toshiba Chromebook 2 was one of the best devices in its price range.
The screen alone rivals $1,000 laptops in terms of quality / real estate but the Chromebook is only $300.
IMO it's the perfect portable developer laptop if you account for specs / price.
Was it something different from Crouton/Chrubuntu/Gallium?
I wrote about the entire process 2 years ago at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo....
I still happily use it today.
When I was transitioning into software development, I had ~$1000 left in my bank account, but the consultancy I had just landed an internship with asked me to provide my own laptop, so figuring the compatibility would be decent, I forked out roughly $450 for a Toshiba Chromebook 2 and a new emmc drive. Developed on that thing for a over a year running Ubuntu and later GalliumOS.
The screen is still better than my ThinkPad. Unfortunately, I spilled water on the keyboard at some point, but it pulled double duty as a travel laptop for a year or so after retirement as my daily driver.
Really sad to hear.
No wonder they failed :)
Just got a Lenovo 12" for $179 (and I overpaid) that is an awesome Lubuntu machine.
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.
n=1 of course so I might have just had some wonky hardware or something.
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.
Still have my weird Lifebook from college too. Built my first startup on it. It was as light as a MacBook Air but the performance was absolutely terrible.
Ive had good luck with a Asus AFTER it was formatted. The bloatware from the original install had me trashing Asus as a company because I thought their hardware sucked.
I dont think HP can be trusted, they have 1000 dollar laptops without onboard graphics that they sell to computer illiterate people that want big touch screens and gimmick features.
Any recs?
Dell's XPS 13/15 line run Linux very well, as do Lenovo's Thinkpads.
If you do go down the Windows route, just make sure you create new installation media from the Microsoft website and do a clean install before anything else.
I also use an old Thinkpad 11.6" inch - it runs Ubuntu. I put it on a self-driving RC car and it won't die. Generally recommend Thinkpads.
I also have an HP Spectre x360 13" 2017. The trackpad is a bit buggy with Ubuntu but apart from that its seriously not a bad deal. It has USB-c and I can connect an external GPU enclosure for machine learning. Also great as a Netflix device
Yeah, the screen is old, but it's not that big of a deal IMO.
The wife has a Macbook Air I believe from 2013. Swapped in an SSD upgrade some time ago, still kickin.
The biggest issues IMO are ghosting and color gamut, but I don't really care for using Sublime or browsing Reddit and HN. The MBA is not my main machine anyway.
Under the new models, the old non-touchbar 15" with deeper keyboard is shown.
The touchbar is entirely useless though. I've mapped the escape key to capslock, not doing so would have driven me insane.
I actually like the feel of the new keyboard but the "J" key is busted and compressed air isn't cutting it anymore so I'm going to have to send my main laptop off for a week which is a huge disturbance in my work flow (gotta set up the backup Mac)
Looking to give Apple the least amount of money as possible.
Mpbs were, and still are, very popular dev machines, so most dev tasks are pretty easy to achieve. Just be careful not to install multiple package managers or you may never find some of your libraries again.
I kept a 2011-era one alive for a long time, but it finally died late last year - and nothing that Lenovo was selling at the time seemed very tempting.
https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/huawei-matebook-pr...
Also Dell support for me personally has been great so far. I had a single dead pixel on my screen and they replaced without any questions within just two weeks.
Most Linux distros work out of the box. Manjaro took me 20 minutes to set up.
For most vendors, there is a big difference between their consumer hardware, sold based on price, bells & whistles; and their corporate hardware, sold based on cost of ownership - availability, manageability, serviceability, support. In many cases, the corporate model is worth the extra cost up front - it saves much more in headaches down the road. But usually they lack features for gaming and some other consumer or specialized applications.
I've seen many HP corporate models last seemingly forever - so long that the users grow frustrated because they can't justify a new computer. There's a ~14 year old one not far from where I'm sitting that runs perfectly and is in perfect condition, other than the pointstick (it has a trackpad too).
It's annoying that Dell and HP decided to continue to copy Apple by going all USB-C.