screen turns off when plugged in

Are you sure that the Clip turns off? When charging via the computer, the Clip is set for the screen to turn off after about an hour, while charging progresses, to help preserve the life of the screen–you can get the screen back on (to check the charging progress, for example) by touching a button such as the center button. Otherwise, what USB mode (under the Clip’s settings) are you set to, MSC or MTP mode? If not yet set to MSC mode, you might try setting to that. Finally, if you are having a problem in connecting to your computer with the original Clip, you might try forcing an MSC mode connection: with the Clip off, put it on hold (so that the orange under the on-off slider appears) and then hold the center button down while you connect your Clip to your computer. I hope something here helps–