Laptop Broken,PC World are Useless....Help Please!!!

hi first time posting on here, hopefully someone can help. I'm a final year university student with a Toshiba Equium L40 laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium.

Ok so to start off I bought my laptop in PC World Galway in Sept 2008 at the start of the college year. Even shelled out an extra €300 on insurance for 5 years just to be safe. Everything went grand to start with, no major problems etc for the first few months, then it all hit the fan. One day while studying for exams the charger seemed to overheat and melt the cable going into the laptop. Immediately the laptop shut down but luckily was in Galway at the time so I was able to get to the store before closing time that day. As I really needed the laptop for the exams, I was told that they could sell me a charger to replace the fried one and then, when I was finished, could bring it back to the shop for it to be fixed.

So I done that, and about 2 weeks later got the laptop back along with a new charger and told it should all be ok. So there I was with an "as new" laptop or so I thought. Sent it in for the free yearly healthcheck at the start of September and was again given the ok. Fast forward a few weeks and I start getting blue screen errors popping up. First of all i think it could be due to new programs I installed, so I deleted all of the ones that had been installed and ran the virus scan thinking that would solve everything. Again I had about a week's peace until it started crashing again, so another visit to PC world was in order. I left it in to them and was told to call back in a few days.

The day I called back to collect it they told me they'd restored the factory settings and it should be working again as normal. However the same story kept happening and being sick of having to go to the shop I restored the factory settings myself, but like the last time it had hardly any effect. I tolerated the errors as they only popped up once in a while but 3 weeks ago i accidently cracked the screen.So as ye can guess I'm pretty much p****d off at that stage so its off to PC World again. This time their waiting list is apparently 3 or 4 weeks for repairs so I'm told to send it off via courier and that'll only take 2 weeks. As its coming up to christmas exams and I've got projects due, I decided that'd be the best option to take.

The laptop arrived at home last monday but seeing as I was in college all week I only got access to it last night. The screen was perfectly repaired but the slider that allows you to open the screen lid is now really difficult to use. So at around half 8 last night I started to download the automatic updates for windows as usual when up pops the Bluse Screen once again!!

First thing this morning I rang customer support and explained the situation. Now I've been told that the crowd that repaired the screen apparently dont solve software errors like the blue screen and I'll have to send it off again for another 2 weeks to have that fixed and the hardware department will have to fix the slider....OR that they could guide me through the restoring process that would last about 45 mins and sounded a whole lot like the system restore I had done myself. Then I asked about what options I had as regards to a replacement and was told that they couldnt give me one themselves and I'd have to go to the shop but even then it would be unlikely.

So my question is: What options do I really have available to me? and what do I do if I'm refused a replacement or refund as opposed to getting it repaired?
I'd really rather one of the first two options as I'm getting sick of constantly being without the laptop and even more-so due to the fact I need certain programs for my final year projects and subjects

Thanks for reading and any replies would be greatly appreciated,

Finian