Is "New" laptop actually secondhand?!

Sloganjerry

Hi Guys! I bought a Toshiba Satellite L500-1XC from Sainsburys last night for £349. I'd missed out on deals on better spec laptops and was getting desperate soprobably rushed in tobuying this one. Specs are i3-330M core processor, 2GB RAM 320GB Hard drive.

When I got it home I started setting it up with anti-virus, etc and noticed that there had already been programmes downloaded dating from 12/2009 to 3/2010? Thought maybe this was done by Toshiba so carried on with set up, although wasn't happy that this dates the laptop as almost 2 years old!? Came to register for the warranty with Toshiba and received message that warranty had expired?????? Surely if I've bought a 'new' laptop how can the warranty have expired???

Now thinking I want to take the laptop back as alsonot happy with quality of graphics or the very tinny sounding speakers but have now downloaded some stuff and not sure if they willjust accept it back? Any advice guys on this? Is there a way to do a facory re-set to return it to how it was when I bought it or should they take it back as it is anyway? Appreciate any advice on this. Thanks guys! :beer:

Fifer

The fact that Toshiba say the warranty has expired suggest to me that someone already registered the warranty, then took it back and it's been sold again as new. I'd take it back as it is and explain, although you might want to wait until Monday and have a chat with someone at CAB or Trading Standards.

Wannie_2

Don't worry. They will take it back.

If you don't have any sensitive information on it, take it back as it is. That way you can demonstrate to them if need be, that there were old programs already installed(if there were) and that you can no longer register the warranty or have the option to purchase the Toshiba extended warranty. As clicking here and selecting 'Compatible Services' will demonstrate.

That laptop has long been discontinued. They should have discounted it accordingly.
It doesn't mean that it was pre-used. Only that it is too old to register the warranty.

But if the box did not have it's original seal and you did not have to set Windows 7 up from 'scratch', then of course it has been used. Either way, I'm sure that they will not quibble.

Andrew1472

I have had the same model for 13 months now and would agree with your assessment regarding graphics and speakers. It has proved trouble free so far though. All in all it is not anything special, but OK.

Mine also has software dated December 2009 on it, some Toshiba bloatware and ethernet controller driver for example, so that is not necessarily a cause for concern. I can't find anything from March 2010 on mine though, but I may have uninstalled it if it was junk.

The warranty and for them to sell such an old machine for that price obviously is a problem. I'd want a refund.

Incidentally, the latest Toshiba supported graphics driver for this laptop are blocked in Firefox, so you can't use hardware acceleration if I'm understanding it correctly.

spannerzone

When you first powered up did it ask you to select the country, username, password as if setting up a brand new account?

It's certainly possible that some preinstalled software and drivers might be quite old especially if it's an older model that's been sitting on a shelf or store room.

You could check to see if there are any previously created 'restore points' which would show dates (this is when Windows creates an auto backup to roll back in case of problems) - a new PC should not have any previous restore points other than when first built, possibly.

More info:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/features/system-restore

You can choose to look at previous restore points and not actually use them so worth a try. (Click on system restore, click the 'choose a different restore point, then choose 'show more restore points' and any previous ones should show up with dates created.