Nothing but problems

I bought this laptop shortly before leaving the US to do a year (or more) stint in Siberia for work (education project). I specifically bought Toshiba due to the quality of their service (yeah, right) and the reliability of their machines. I also seem to have over-paid if the price listed on this site is correct (I bought from Office Depot for $1200). Problem 1: The "Flash Cards" utility crashes frequently and can stall out the computer. After calling tech support, I was lead to a download of a new version of the utility which crashed on the 3rd startup. If you disable the utility, none of the function keys work. Problem 2: Windows Vista Home Edition with several other trial version programs cluttering the registry. This version of Vista is not only unstable, but the maintenance features killed the program! Problem 3: Recovery discs had corrupted files. That's right, I was stuck in Siberia with a new computer which had more/less become an expensive paper weight because the Vista had crashed AND the recovery CDs didn't work. After doing a bit of searching online, I see that I'm not the only one having experienced this. Problem 4: TERRIBLE experience with tech support (again, a complaint I've read from others online). I called AGAIN and this time I talked with a gentleman who told me that they wouldn't send me new recovery discs to Russia - only in the US because (nearly verbatim) 'this notebook is sold in America and is meant to be used there.' That's right, my PORTABLE LAPTOP should only be portable in the US. Then I asked if I could install XP instead and he said they didn't have any drivers and wouldn't support it. Furthermore, if I had done more research I'd have known all of this and would have bought something different. The tech support guy actually implied I was an idiot for having bought this Toshiba in the first place! I now have to spend $165.00 of my own funds to get the recovery disks over here if I want them. Or, he said, I can go buy a commercial version of Vista and install the drivers from the website (nevermind that a legal version of Vista in English costs several hundred dollars and takes more than a month to get here). I called back another time to check on the progress of the shipment of recovery disks, was put "on hold" which hung up the phone. I solved the problem by taking my machine to a computer place here and getting back with some version of Vista and then having to download drivers from the website (not all of which have worked).