[clug-talk] laptop takes the plunge

[Ralph Pichie]

Last weekend, while attempting to take photos for a panorama that I
would later stitch together, my backpack was involved in an unplanned
"condensed-duration elevation reduction event", commonly known as a
sudden drop. Inside, mimicking Humpty Dumpty, was the Acer Aspire
laptop that I had purchased last summer to replace my earlier laptop,
which had developed a cracked lid and other issues due to a design
flaw.

Grabbing for it as it fell, I grasped an item that was loose, and the
bag continued falling. I didn't follow it directly, but I did run
around to where it landed. When powered it on, I was very happy to
hear the sounds of a normal boot process, but less thrilled by the
display that remained dark. With my external monitor hundreds of
kilometers behind in western Saskatchewan and me headed for a flight
to Ottawa in two days, for work, I was really in a bind, as all my
work was on that laptop, and my backups were waiting for me on an
external hard drive that I had shipped ahead of me to a town in
Ontario.

The laptop did work when I connected it to an appropriate monitor that
night at the place where I was staying, confirming that all was not
lost. Perhaps I hadn't been so silly when I spent over $100 on a heavy
duty Targus backpack a year earlier. If my laptop had fallen like that
without all the padding around it, I serious doubt whether anything
would have survived, short of landing on something improbably soft, or
a coincidentally-placed force field of some kind.

The next day, in Regina, i paid a bit more than I probably could have
for an Aspire One, small version, loaded with X:p. I was looking at
getting one anyway, but I'd have rather decided a less destructive
way. It works ok, but definitely going to be upgrading it to a dual
boot with Ubuntu Netbook Remix or something like that.

Should I even  bother looking at a replacement/repair on the main
laptop, or just use it as a desktop system? The laptop cost around
$550 with tax at Staples last year, so it likely isn't worth it, but
if I can, I'd like it to function as intended.