That is the one thing I have noticed since scouring the net and asking everyone and anyone in the know their opinions on who makes the most well put together laptop. It seems that many folks are extreemely loyal to one particular product or brandname, but one brandname doesn't seem to be conclusive over the other. The Imac sure has its very loyal following, as well as Dell and Toshiba and, another brand rapidly picking up steem is HP, especially their DV6000 and DV9000 lines. I am beginning to conclude that at this point, figure out exactly how much of a laptop you need and can afford, paying particular attention to Size of Hard Drive, How much Memory (RAM), and third, how much graphics card, and lastly and most important, the CPU. I have concluded that the duel core processor is important, as it is essentially two processors stapped together, and the OS uses one for certain functions and the other for certain functions, and most importantly, only one is being used and powered when both are not needed, saving battery power and overall electric consumption. Another rule of thumb, to save money, get the base core duo (1.60GHz, I believe), and skip the upgrade on the CPU and get 2G's of RAM, as your CPU runs out of cache space for storage, it will draw from Ram, and adding RAM is much cheaper than adding a high end CPU. Bottom line, I'm waiting for some hot sales. Another thing to think about is size, and yeah, folks, size does matter... Most of the 17" models that I've tried out in the stores just seem too damn big and heavy, especially if your going to use the thing as a LAP top... it's just too damn big for my lap, and I have a big lap at that... the 12" is just too small, especialy for viewing movies, etc. That's the one thing that turned me off from the DELL XPS 1200... hot looking little machine... just too small. 14-15" seems just right for my taste. It seems to me that all these machines (Toshiba, Dell, HP and many others) are all beginning to become clones of one another. Seems they are are made in China nowadays, and no one has yet to convince me overwhelmingly that one is better than the other...

Update: I bought a new cable at Radio Shack. Went to download the driver, found out that NOOOO!!! HP did NOT have the drivers available, for ANY recent Windows systems. Come to find out, the page that was set up with links for downloading the applications was bogus, when you clicked on the link, you got a whole page of information, but bottom line, the drivers weren't available for downloading and hadn't been since 2009. This INFURIATES me!! My Laserject 5L is completely useless now. And no, I don't want to mess around on E-bay trying to find and install this or that for my old laptop. I can't even get the printer to work with the old laptop which has a prong cable connection. The print job goes to the printer, the printer turns on but never prints. Eventually I get an error message. So I don't know what the problem is. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the driver from the computer over and over again, so maybe there is something wrong internally with the printer. My PC guy told me I could get a pretty good laser printer for 100 bucks, and when all's said and done I would probaby have to spend over 100 bucks messing around trying to fix the old system, with possibly no good results anyway, so I'm giving up on my old 5L friend. I am NOT very happy about it!! :(

Lenovo & Toshiba laps I've had both recommended leaving the battery in place. Protects it when power failure too when on ac. The Lenovo has a setting for 50% charge to prolong the life of the battery if on ac always. Replacement batteries are about 100 bucks ! laptop is only 4 months new Warrantied I would assume .. and what you describe matches my oldest Toshiba ... either the power circuit had confusion for some reason, or the power circuit has a problem. If it does it again I certainly would phone the support line. Toshiba told me to send mine in and I didn't thinking it was just one of those rare things that occasionally goof up... until it died completely - after the warrantee ended. Ps; The cmos battery according to Toshiba, would only gain charge with the battery in place too. This post was edited by mikie on Tue, Mar 26, 13 at 18:38

First I have to confess that I have not gotten to backing up the hard drive - or working on the start up programs. Other computer issues in the family took priority - and then we had non-technological family difficulties. So my focus has been elsewhere. The internet connection still sometimes drops. Less often but it happens. I can just buy a wireless dongle. The laptop had been running cooler after getting all the bogus programs off. But lately it's sluggish again and running hot. The hard drive is making a bad noise. Not sure how to describe it but kind of like a car struggling to turn over. It does it just occasionally - some times if it's just trying to perform some action - and just now when I started the laptop. (It has not made the sound since it started up). Since hard drives are mechanical, does this sound like the hard drive might be failing? if it's hardware failure, is there any point in running chkdsk? or any other test? If the hard drive is failing, could that be causing it to run hot and slow at times? seems logical to me but I have no idea. I could inexpensively replace the hard drive. And get a wireless dongle. I imagine all that could be done for under $100 and just a small amount of time. The other troubleshooting I did was partly to learn. Here's what I like about the computer and why I may want to save/keep it: great size - 13", light - but has a great, great keyboard for such a small laptop. like the trackball and no touchpad. includes a free upgrade to Vista (so it could be used after XP is not supported) What I don't like: ongoing wireless adapter problems, sometimes running hot, possible failing hard drive, no web cam. Not sure if I'll put it to sleep soon - or try to resuscitate it. If I decide to let it die a peaceful death, there's no need to back up the HD. If I decide to replace the hard drive (if it needs it) or keep it if the HD's fine, I will back it up and make that a priority. And of course, now that I'm writing this post, it's behaving absolutely fine. Quick, cool, no noise. Thanks. Lynn.