The mobility you gain is at the cost of product quality and life-span. The products are also tiny so there is a restriction in cooling capabilities which are inadequate for even modest gaming or demanding uses. Just to compare any example my now defective notebook's idle temperatures are higher than fully stress testing my desktop CPU for 12 hours straight. Moderate gaming produces temperatures that are higher than full 12 hour long GPU benchmarks. Chances are your systems have died just as a result of normal uses and the limited life-span of mobiles rather than viruses. Most viruses have the purpose of collecting information in order to commit fraud under your name rather than damaging the system itself.
To address a few question you posts.
my Toshibas simply went black screen.
burned out like light bulb?
or could this be hacking?
The back light could have died thus there is no ability to project anything on to your screen. If this happens before windows even loads then it was not a virus. If this does not happen in safe-mode then it is not a virus. It is a simple mechanical failure otherwise.
These were laptops.
The first went dead outright.....no response even at Office Max.
The second has a dead screen but an active battery.....no keyboard.
Power can still be run through a system without a monitor working. If the system even turns on then chances are the monitor died rather than a system failure. If the system does not power up then it is a hardware failure which is most likely the power supply, connect from the supply to the system via battery or a/c ports or a motherboard failure.
forgive me if I seem antique.....what is sata?
It is the standard connect for a hard drive and solid state drive to a motherboard. It allows it to communicate with the system as a whole.
there was a HP with a tower before the laptops.
it died a slow and ugly death....
first the loss of files....
then a crumpled appearance on the boot up screen.
like someone took the picture on a piece of paper ...crushed it....and put it back on screen.
there was even an old DOS that displayed the computer's details and origin...
that screen lost letters and spelling...
and then odd characters appeared (little smiley faces and playing card symbols.)
The last time I turned it on only the crumpled Windows logo appeared.
dead keyboard.
Data loss is a hard drive failure. Screen issues are either the monitor or gpu failure.
I get security pushed at me continually.
makes me paranoid....
especially after that news alert of someone using Windows logo as a front for their spyware.
Most of the updates are forced....can't say no.
The machine will shut down right in the middle of whatever.
There is a reason for that. Windows as an OS is easy to infect with a virus. Get Linux and you will never need protection programs as Linux is not worth hacking nor infecting.
Most viruses attack your software thus regardless of Mac, Linus or Windows the software is the major source of infection. Windows is just easier to infect itself via software than OS X and Linux. Even Firefox or Chrome can be infected both of which can be used on Linux and OS X
Windows update are mandatory regardless of how you feel or not. As pointed out above Windows is an OS which is always vulnerable thus it needs updates as people poke more holes in the poor coding of the OS.
digressing just a bit.....
Are there viruses that physically harm the circuits?
or is it simply a matter of confusing the basic OS?
Yes some can. One virus for example is used for bitcoin farming, an internet currency. In order to generate these bitcoins your gpu needs to run at full load thus a virus for this purpose will load your gpu with algorithms to generate coins which will be transferred to another user. This puts stress on your system well beyond even gaming use. A full load is placing your system at it's maximum capabilities which not all systems are designed to handle. For example a stock cooling system for an intel CPU will be hard pressed to hand a 100% load for a long period of time while an aftermarket cooling system is designed for this purpose. Most ready to buy systems are designed for moderate uses not server use which see this 100% loads for long duration. However this are easy to find using task manager for the CPU or a GPU program like afterburner.
As I said before a notebook/laptop is not a desktop. Regardless of what the manufactures claims these systems will never be equal to a desktop of similar specification. Even the specification are clever commercial tricks. A notebook with say a 850m or 920m are not products with the equivalent desktop 800/900s. A 800m is around a 600 series for desktops thus 4-5 year old tech. A 900 is a high end 600 or low end 700, 2-5 year old tech. It is all marketing since big numbers are fancy and people like big numbers. All notebooks have heat issues. All notebooks throttles, reduce, it's own capabilities without the user being aware so that the product does not kill itself running mundane task a desktop can. You can also notice for yourself most notebooks only have a 1-2 year warranty while desktop parts have mostly 3 year warranties, at times even life-time warranties. Mobiles are designed for mobility nothing more thus you get what you pay for. A limited short life-span product you are carry with you. Everything else such as "gaming notebook" are commercials designed to fool the customer into buying a limited product at a high price. The notebook industry has been robbing it's customers blind for years. Repairs are expensive as well which is part of robbing customers for the sake of mobility
Stick with cheap notebooks so you are not burned when a system fails a year later.
