BitWrangler wrote on 2023-12-19, 14:24:
Now for Satellites, I have personally had hands on older models and much newer models. The older models, Pentium and MMX class, tend to have plastic that is degrading, and we've also seen a few screens delaminate. The CD drives can die and be hard to replace. So I would recommend only in person purchase of any of those so you can get a proper feel for condition. Unless you get a "found in closet, don't know if it works" deal for $70 or under. The later models have better plastic though, so I don't know if this criticism applies to P3 models.
Worth noting the LCD delamination (known as vinegar syndrome, it's a failure of the glue that holds on the polarizer film), is not a Toshiba failure, it's an LCD failure. Can and will happen in any LCD in any laptop. Can also be repaired, but it's one of the most difficult repairs you'll have to do to one of these, probably the most difficult one.
The plastics are also not a Toshiba problem really, more of an industry problem. I will give you that the Toshiba plastics seem especially bad, my guess would be just that they seem pretty thin in comparison to a lot of other brands. I suspect though that the newer P3 Toshibas are probably not that far behind. I've also heard of hinge failures happening on those.
The real Toshiba killer is the CMOS and Hiberation batteries. They're VARTA Nickel-Metal-Hydride cell batteries, two of them, inside the laptops. These batteries leak nearly 100% of the time after 20+ years. ALL the Toshibas, from the biggest Tecra to the smallest Libretto from the time have them, and they're located right over the motherboard in many (like the Satellite Pro 400 series, not sure where they are in the 4000 series), and they're killing most of them. I'd say avoid buying one untested or dead, instead, find one working and remove the batteries ASAP and you should be fine.
I know a lot less about those Compaqs. I do that they used that design for a good few years and sold a crap-load of them, most seemingly low-end units with crappy passive matrix displays. The earlier ones I've seen plenty of plastic failures around the display hinges on (seen from just browsing a crap load of eBay listings). I've seen far less of the later P3 models like the 1800T, so I don't know whether they're built better or not. These seem pretty electrically reliable though, eBay's full of POSTing examples, even if many are cosmetically trashed.
Overall, I'd personally take a good condition Toshiba over a mediore condition Compaq. Granted the most time I've spent in person with one of those Compaqs was a brief few seconds at the VCF swap meet, but the Toshibas seem in general to be a higher quality system, and the Yamaha sound is a plus. The Compaq is probably lower maintenance though, and that later high end model might be way better, not sure. The Toshibas do tend to have really nice keyboards.
If you're looking for the best of the best, it's apparently the Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402, but they're pretty darn rare.
I probably have too many old laptops.