Anyone know what's going on with my netbook?

If you use your netbook for primarily Internet applications and word-processing, you might want to consider a different OS. You can try out Jolicloud” without making a permanent change. I liked it so much that I decided to replace Win XP with it. I have never had a moment’s regret.

It is free, open source, and a very well thought out iteration of Ubuntu with a convenient UI.

@pdworkin‘s answer is a viable option but first I would try to find out why the display blanks out. Look (if it will stay on long enough) at the power saving, sleep, and hibernate settings. A video driver may be faulty and need to be refreshed or upgraded, Since the unit must be pretty new, check with customer service to see if this issue has become a problem on other Toshiba products. It really sounds like an operating system problem and if I were a betting man I would bet on the video driver or a power saving routine.

Whatever you do, call customer service first.

Most of the time mine blanks out, it’s the power management shutting off the backlight on my screen.

@pdworkin How well does it work when you are not in a wifi spot though? I’ve been looking at dual-booting my AA1(or ditching XP entirely) but I’m not into Twitter, IM, and all that social crap, like to install my own software from repositories, and do quite a bit of stuff off-line. Is Jolicloud appropriate for someone like me, or would I be better off with just plain-old Ubuntu UNR?

are you using the netbook on a bed or other loose surface where the cooling vents can be blocked? Sounds like you may be overheating the netbook causing the thermal switch to cut-out the power in order to preserve the motherboard from burning.

If the screen remains blank even prior to booting, then wouldn’t the problem be independent of the OS.

In that case, yes. When you first hit the button and are going through the POST process, it hasn’t had time to read any sort of settings so the backlight will come on and all, even if it’s only for a second or so.

If the screen is blank even then, then you better hope that it’s something simple like a loose connector, or even something slightly more complex like a blown backlight. Then again, it’s often (though still not exactly cheap) to get a new display.

Then again, a new netbook isn’t much more than the cost of most displays unless you paid more than you should’ve in the first place (I still don’t see the point of the $450–700 netbooks since you can get a comparably small and more powerful notebook for that price. Part of why I went with an Acer is that it’s price was right and it was no less powerful.) so it may be a wash.