I've know for a while that my travel laptop is dying. A few years ago, I had a heat problem. The bottom of the laptop kept heating up to sorching temperatures for no reason I could discern. So I installed some software, including a CPU temp monitor, and found out that my CPU was heating up beyond safe temps. The solution was to re-goo the heatsink. And I didn't exactly get the laptop cover put together correctly.
Fast forward to this past summer and the heat issue is back, along with an intermittent shutdown / blue screen o' death issue. I do a little research and find out that my fan / grill is probably gunked up with dust and what not. I pull up these instructions to take my laptop apart and what happens?
I break one of the motherboard cables (tiny little thing, the middle one in step 14), leaving part of it behind in the middle board.
Well, CRAP.
So now I have to order parts to get my laptop working again. And I should probably re-goo the heatsink again, just to be safe. Still, there's something to be said for taking apart the hardware and giving it a good cleaning. More people should do such things. It's cheaper than buying a new machine (I hope).
In the meantime, I've ordered some Android root-your-Nook SD cards to "upgrade" my Nook without voiding the warranty. I'm going to test both the N2A and the RootMyNook and see which one I like better. Hopefully this means I can use my Nook as a writing device when I'm traveling, and save myself some weight.
EDIT: Well, CRAP CRAP CRAP. Top cover assemblies are not sold as separate pieces, so it looks like I'm buying a new laptop. In the meantime, there is some hope that the cable I broke was to the mouse touch pad. As I have a USB mouse, I might still be able to salvage this laptop for a bit. So here goes nothing while trying to put it back together.
6 Responses
I’ve never been brave enough to take apart a laptop with the intent to repair it. I dropped off my Air had a rebuild the day the warranty expired, so that should be good for at least another couple of years. I’ve been planning on getting a new(ish) MacBook Pro to get back to 16 gig of memory and a larger HD, but I need to get a new car in a couple of months first.
You might check eBay for a “Parts only” laptop, you might be able to cannibalize one for the other.
I don’t have it in front of me, but I bought an Android card for my Nook, the previous generation before they went Samsung. I found it to be… inconvenient. I was having problems getting it to update and to download apps through the various app stores, eventually I removed it and turned it back in to a standard Nook. I think part of the problem is that the Nook is low-powered compared to a Nexus or Samsung device. Since then I came in to a small inheritance that got me an iPad Mini which I’ve been very happy with. I prefer using my spare brain cycles for dealing with database design, SQL Server, and board/card game design rather than fighting with my personal hardware/software.
What is it with everybody but me coming into nice hardware for “free”?
I think the tech gods hate me. @=)
Then again, my condolences to you for the loss that led to the inheritance. Forgive me for making light of it.
I have been lucky with tech. My wife bought me my first MacBook Pro, the Great Tree Incident of ’12 got me my 27″ iMac. I don’t remember who paid for my Air.
When I got married, I moved 500 miles away from my parents. One of my dad’s sisters lived in Las Cruces and I went and saw her fairly often, my wife and I would sometimes play dominos with her or take her out to dinner, and we’d visit her whenever we were in town to at least swing by and say hi. She passed away last year April at the age of 90 IIRC. I can’t do much for my parents because of the distance, but my brother and sister are there and they’re in pretty good shape considering they’re in their 80s, so I did what I could for the sister in ‘Cruces including dropping everything and tearing across the basin when she started her final health crash to stay with her until other family could get there.
My dad was her executor, and he handed me a check for $5G after the funeral. I was gobsmacked. It got me a full-frame DSLR which I’d been putting money towards, plus the iPad and taking care of some credit card debt. I’d rather have my aunt, but I got A LOT of use out of my camera when we were in Germany during the summer.
And if you’re interested and have an external monitor, I have an older MacBook Pro, circa 2009, with a Core 2 Duo IIRC that could be looking for a new home. The video is flakey, thus the need for a monitor. Sound is fried. 500 gig HD, 4 gig ram. I was going to give it to a friend but he went and bought a new MacBook recently.
I haven’t used it in 3 years, but as far as I know it still works, I don’t recall what version of os-x that it’s running, probably 10.8
I have several external monitors and have been wondering about getting a MacBook at some point. If you’re sure you’re willing to part with it, I’d love it.
Email me your private email address through LJ or SSC. I’m in Denver right now for SQL Saturday and won’t be home until Thursday (my next stop is a DB project launch meeting in Albuquerque on Wednesday), I’ll charge and check out the laptop when I get home and we’ll go from there.