No, Toshiba is one of the last remaining really solid brands out there. If you've been happy with them, I'd stay stick with it. I still miss my baby T-1000, which I suspect was the first laptop in my small town. It was fabulous, although the librarians at the local community college research library did give me the sideeye, wondering if I was allowed to have it in there.

Sadly, one can only deauthorize all computers once a year and I did it in January.

Ooh, how do you do that?

1. Click iTunes Store on the left side of iTunes.
2. If you're not signed in to the store, click the Account button, then enter your account name and password.
3. Click the Account button again (your Apple ID appears on the button), enter your password, and then click View Account.
4. In the Account Information window, click Deauthorize All.

[link]

One thing to avoid is Lenovo. Yeah really well built. But service is beyond awful. Basically if you have to send it in, they will ship it to China for repairs. One friend had them lose enroute back from China, and it took months for them to give him a replacement. Another had one sent for servicing returned six weeks later infested with malware that took weeks to remove. I suspose if you could get one cheap enough you could ignore any warranty and have it serviced through someone you trust. But it would have to cheap enough to make up for having essentially no warranty. I guess that might be a reason for buying one of the ripoff warranties.

Thanks, Jon! I will try it.

I’ve upgraded to Lion! I’m living in the future!

We actually had a really good service experience with Lenovo. They sent us an overnight box, fixed the problem and overnighted it back, all in warranty, no charge. Total time, less than a business week, and that's with me futzing around figuring out where to drop off the box.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad I've only had for a couple of months. It's pretty nice and I paid the extra $50 to get the 9 cell battery. The battery life is pretty good, I'm guessing 7-9 hours depending on what I'm doing. Feels well constructed too, but I haven't had to deal with service.

Interesting Liese. Was this recent? Because my friend in Chico sent in his laptop for service in May, and got in back in June with Malware. And during the six weeks it was gone they sent him notices that it was on the way to China, that it was in China being worked on, that it had been shipped back to the U.S. and so on.

iTunes can kiss my ass -- I deauthorized all computers, reauthorized the current one, and there's still the same issue. I have no idea what kind of issue there could be with the iPod, because I only have the one Apple ID, but I guess I'll just go without those songs. Bleh.

Yup, I'd say within the last 8-12 months.