Northwind Computers, on Hays Street. A few months back I mentioned that my antique laptop was having overheating problems, and I removed as much dust and cat hair as I could reach from the fan grille. Then I tried to disassemble it so that I could actually get inside. The instructions that I found online were not spectacularly useful, and eventually, I settled for what I could vacuum out, and reassembled it.
A few days ago, I discovered that the microphone input jack was no longer working, even though the headphone/speaker jack next to it worked fine. So I took the computer into Northwind for cleaning, and I told them about the problem that I was having with the microphone jack. They disassembled it, cleaned, and discovered that the wire from the microphone jack was being run into by the DVD drive mechanism. They did not have a working microphone, but they thought that this was the problem. If the circuit board responsible for this was at fault, the parts would be about $6, and their labor just another half hour.
Total charges: $37.
When I plugged the microphone in last night, it again works!
Yes, I really should buy a new laptop, but the prospect of spending many hours reinstalling my applications is a bit discouraging. I have other work to do.
I understand the urge not to spend money, but modern laptops (and of course desktops) are so stupidly faster it's a good investment. Micro Center sells Core i7s as low as $500 on sale. I had a first-gen Core i5 (that, sadly, died an early death) that was really fast. $800 would get you a pretty darn powerful i5. (I hate using slow computers with a burning passion.)
ReplyDeleteOnce the College of Western Idaho paychecks start up again in September, I will be buying something fast and small as a replacement. But at the moment, I am paying for several major car repairs, a pump repair, and having to do it on a software engineer's miserable salary.
ReplyDeleteAnd the hassle of reinstalling all my applications (looking up license numbers, etc.) is a strong incentive to not rush into it.
Stop running on bare metal if you don't want the periodic hassle of reinstalling. Virtual OS running your apps allows you to change hardware without the pain of reinstall. All you need to install is the virtualization system. As a bonus, backup is dirt simple. Shut down your virtual environment and back up the whole thing from outside. You'll never have a file fail to back up because it was locked or open again.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this box is so old that when I tried to install VMWare...it wouldn't.
ReplyDelete