Thanks, Tux. Will do.
As for the issues with the Toshiba, in brief:
1. their Tech help in Thailand is not staffed with techies. Their ONLY knowledge comes out of a listing they have which matches up problems with solutions. For any and every problem not in their book, they are directed to tell users to use the utility disk to wipe the HDD and start over.
2. My CD/DVD player (which I rarely use) stopped working by the 4th month of ownership. I was directed to send the computer in to their U.S. repair center. They held onto my computer for 3 weeks, which is about 2 weeks more than Dell will hold on to your computer (and Dell offers a temp replacement if the issue is NOT your fault and within warranty)...and it came back with 2 USB drives not working, the wireless only detects connections about 50% of the time now, and there're other minor issues.
Crazy, huh?
Anyway, thanks again for ALL of your help.