Perhaps I should have been concerned by the 1 year warranty or maybe it was the constant switching itself off or possibly it was the hard drive failing after 8 months but anyway to cut a long story short I have a rather expensive paperweight on my hands.

Owing to personal circumstances I'm out of warranty range and unless it's a harddrive problem out of warranty.
The machine originally crashed about a month back with arounds 9 programs running none of them particularly intensive. It froze totally and after waiting a considerable time I decided to switch off the machine.

Upon restarting I was left with a rather blank looking screen staring back at me - much as I like jet black this wasn't very hopeful.

After that the machine had a nice clean and was returned working. I believe it rebooted 3 times just to see if the problem persisted. Under the impression it was (and having removed all data to an external hard drive) I set about working as normal, roughly an hour into this and using a graphically intensive program for the 2nd time it crashed and rebooting just got a nice black screen again.

Again we gave it a good clean (concentrating on the fans and heat sink and giving it a good dose of dry air) and first time the machine booted up fine. Three times later I was convinced it was as fixed as it could be.

I tried a graphically intensive program and switched the machine off as the battery was running low. After the 10 minute drive home I connected the machine up and was met by a - yes you've guessed it - black screen of nothingness.

To be clear we don't even have the option to get into the BIOS, the machine just arrogantly switches on, tests the optical drive then nothing, the hard disk does not mount. In short it's quite dead.

As an aside to any clever chap or chapess that could offer an explanation - virus in the boot sector? Graphics card melted? Or as we suspect a problem somewhere on the motherboard is it possible to order another motherboard?

Fujitsu Siemens process all their hardware through Germany where I'm assuming it's a subsiduary of FS which is why when living in the Canaries it took a month for a new hard drive.

I've been quoted $550+ to send it to the US but I'm assuming they too have to wait for a part from Germany and actually sending the laptop to the US will easily put the cost at over $1000 which seems a little steep for a 2 year old machine that I'd be lucky to get that price for!

Apologies for the long post!

Grumpy in Guatemala.