Computer Madness...

Those of you who have read this blog and comments for a while may be aware that I have two functioning laptops in my home, both of which are capable of doing anything technical this site has required. The newer of the computers I purchased a little over a year ago from Office Depot.
Lately I have been having problems with this newer laptop..a Toshiba Satellite A75. Besides being inconsistent with its audio performance it has recently taken to overheating and turning itself off. Fortunately none of these “shutdowns” has ever occurred while I was doing something important with it..
In my latest adventure in trying to get repairwork done I discovered some things:
1. There is ALWAYS a busy signal when you attempt to call an “800 help line.”
2. Anyone representing a warranty provider will try to get out of the responsibility of helping you.
3. Those things a service warranty says to get you to purchase it are BS.
e.g. “carry-in/drop-off service will be provided for notebooks. With thousands of service facilities nationwide reliable service is always nearby.” (It turns out that if something is really wrong with your laptop it is going out of town whether you like it or not).
Yesterday I finally got hold of someone at the 800 number. They informed me that they will be forwarding me a carton in which to send them the malfunctioning computer. In the meantime they advised that I do what I can to save anything important in the laptop in some other form because the nature of my problem suggests I will probably lose the hard drive if not the whole computer itself. So I may be getting a new computer several weeks from now…yeah right..I’ve since read a dozen horror stories of what happens after you ship the computer off to the service warranty provider.