When it rains, it POURS
So, not much more than one week after I got back my fancy, expensive camera, I was sitting there, editing my photos on my powerbook, and *thunk* my chocolate milk is suddenly pouring all over the keyboard. My instant reaction was to lift up the computer, turn it upside down, and lay it on the floor to let the milk drain out. I wasn’t quite quick enough, though, and within seconds, the machine made a sad little beeping noise and shut down.
I spent the next half an hour, or so, soaking chocolate milk out of the keyboard with various towels, and then cleaning it up off the couch and the carpet. It may be a while before I ever drink chocolate milk again.
I decided to pull up directions on how to get under the keyboard on line, and I opened up this computer for the first time. I was a laptop repair technician for a couple years in college, so the idea of pulling the thing to pieces and cleaning it up wasn’t that scary. And it didn’t turn out to be difficult. Unfortunately, there was milk EVERYWHERE. A puddle in the middle of the logic board, under and above the RAM, under the harddrive and the DVD drive.
While I had my machine open, Mark was sitting on the couch in front of his laptop. At one point, he turned around on the couch and knocked over the TV tray that had his laptop sitting on it.
“Oh, it’s not turning back on.” He mumbled when he lifted it off the floor. He popped out the battery and plugged it back in to see if that was the problem. Suddenly, a plume of SMOKE came pouring out the side of his laptop, and BRIGHT ORANGE FLAMES shot out the side!! Mark grabbed the battery, yanked it out of his computer, and threw it across the room!
“So, that’s broken.” He said calmly.
We stood there silently, shocked and dumbfounded. Our living room smelled strongly of burnt solder and toasted chocolate milk. Liv wagged her tail.
The next day we spent doing triage. It turns out Mark’s laptop had the super extended warranty and was still covered for drops and spontaneous combustion. My laptop was over three years old, and replacing the logic board alone would cost over $800. I decided, rather than send it out and have somebody try to repair it, I would spend the first part of my money and energy trying to get my photos and music off the harddrive (if I still could) and then probably just replace the machine.
After having most of the computer shops in town turn me away as nobody can read the Mac File System, I learned that the drive was still working, and the guys at Run PC sold me a $20 enclosure that turned the laptop harddrive into an external drive. I was finally able to access all of my data on my work computer this afternoon.
I feel like some kind of weird necromancer right now. The hulking, sticky shell of my dead computer is still sitting in pieces on my dining room table. But I’ve managed to resurrect it’s spirit and soul temporarily inside my computer here at work. Hey there laptop! Not doing so well, are we?
Personally, unless you have completely become a Mac addict, which would be sad considering I remember our excitement at Best Buy when Win95 and OS/2 Warp came out….
I’d recommend an Acer. I’ve got a Acer 5672, built in Wi-Fi (fun in the airport, and found someone had a network running on my flight to Denver…) also, built in Bluetooth (hello, random stranger’s cell phone…) plus, it’s a Dual Core proc, with 2 gigs of RAM (more than my PC at work… I could put out the whole paper from this little thing…) Oh, it was like 1 grand and came with FREE Tivo! (filled with Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, and Food Network shows)
Just my $0.02, but ya know…
You just pull the guts out of there, put them in here, plug your straw in there, and suck out the good bits! Mmmmm, chocolate milk.
Thanks Jason. It would be nice to get away with only $1k in replacement costs, but I have to have a mac for work. Our whole research group works exclusively on Macs now, as OSX is just a pretty face on the standard Unix OS. Thus all of our stinky old command-line Unix-based compilers and such will still work on these shiny new machines.
The new powerbooks (aka Macbook Pros) also have built in WiFi and bluetooth (as did my old one), 2 gigs of Ram, Dual Core Intel processors now, and 2 gigs of RAM. Plus built in webcams, iLife, and all the fun Mac toys. They just cost twice or three times as much.
And completely off subject… we’ve got two Tivos at home, why would we need another one? :) Heros is like my favorite show right now too! DAMN! Peter Petrelli gets HOT in the future!! Mark is a huge fan of Dinner Impossible and Alton Brown, and Battlestar Galactica. I can’t keep up with those space soap-opras though. “Who’s sleeping with who? Who’s kid is that? Isn’t she actually a robot? You mean, that lady that he’s sleeping with now doesn’t even exist? Ok, I’m confused.” It’s way worse than Days of our Lives. I just can’t keep up.
Heh heh, Dylan, that’s so gross. You have no idea how much dog hair was also inside the computer when I cracked it open. This shot is after I cleaned it up the best I could. :)
I’ve gotten it to a point where it will power up, spin up the HD and the DVD burner, and then sit there quietly. It doesn’t actually load the OS. I need some kind of system disk to do a device evaluation boot, but I don’t know where mine is. I’m going to pull the logic board out and soak it in rubbing alcohol for a while tonight too. See if that does anything.