Making it hot for Toshiba

In the US, Toshiba is being sued over the design of two Satellite notebook PCs that were among the first to use desktop processors in portables. The class action lawsuit alleges that "the company knowingly concealed a design flaw that caused the notebooks to overheat and shut down", according to an IDG report at PCWorld.com. The risk of heating problems was known in the trade, and I wrote a piece that started "Notebook PC buyers could be making a big mistake if they choose the wrong type of processor" (Online, March 14). At the time, Steve Crawley, Toshiba's marketing manager in the UK, told me: "You run the risk of overheating and thermal shutdown in a bad design. But you can design around the fact that you are using a desktop processor and keep the chip within Intel's guidelines."