Don’t let me touch your computer this week…
It’s been a bad week for me and technology.
First on Sunday, my personal Macbook’s hard drive decided to start the slow process of dying. I noticed some slowdown, ran a test and found numerous problems. Needless to say I started backing up much more often than usual.
Then Monday morning, during a training time, my clumsy hands directed half of a styrofoam cup of coffee onto my running work laptop. Ahhh, FREAK OUT!
Luckily, I knew what to do, so grabbing the laptop with both hands while simultaneously pressing the power button I poured out the rest of the coffee, on to the floor… and my pants. I was then able to remove the entire back cover of the laptop and laid it out, hoping it would dry well.
Tuesday morning came. A cloud of fear hung over me as I put the laptop back together.
Will it work? Will it somewhat work? Is it fried? Why am I so clumsy? Is there any coffee made?
Bong!
Yes, it turns on! It’s running fine!
No, wait… I can’t enter anything on the keyboard.
[Keyboard - Volume Up! Volume Up! Volume Up! Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab]
Sigh.
I then plugged in an external keyboard and found that it worked just fine with the external keyboard. Phew.
The keyboard not working is a problem though, so at this point we’ve order a special screwdriver to take the laptop apart, clean it and put it back together again. The good news is that, at most, the entire top case would cost $150. That’s much better than $900 for a brand new one.
Lesson learned – Styrofoam cups + Coffee + Keyboard + Clumsiness = Disaster.
Oh, and I was able to install a new hard drive in my home laptop, so its working fine.
So, I’ll leave this Tech Support Thursday with a couple questions:
Have you ever spilled anything on a laptop?
Did you, aaaaaaah, FREAK OUT!?!
Every spill I’ve ever had near my laptop managed to miss by a hair.
My users at work usually aren’t that lucky.