As I type this, I am using my old laptop. Yes, the same laptop I stupidly set on the edge of the couch long ago and then watched fall, breaking the charger port. It's trippy. I adored this computer. It was a Sony, it was ridic expensive and it served me well. I still remember buying it. I decided to take the plunge but was displaced at the time, living out of a hotel room with my best friend due to some housing issues. And I was miserable. I don't tend to be a big fan of hotels in general so living in one drove me insane. I was going to wait until we were back in house to buy my laptop but the BF suggested I do it then because it might cheer me up and take my mind off the negative. The day turned out more memorable than I imagined. I bought the laptop, left it there at the store so the dude could install some software and set it up, we went to lunch and then returned to the store. I ran into the store while she stayed in the car and came out with a giant box and a couple of PC games. We went to start the car and...nothin'. The battery was dead. It was a pain in the ass at the time but now it's one of those, "could only happen to us" kinda stories. Eventually, we did make it back to the hotel and ended up tag teaming one of the games I bought while marveling over the wonders of wireless internet. If nothing else, it was memorable. This computer was pretty damn awesome to me. The battery life sucked but that's true of most laptops even today (mine has a high capacity battery and still only gets about three hours of battery life). It rarely had any other problems though. Sony makes good stuff.
So how did we get from a busted charger port to posting a blog, you ask? A combination of dumb luck and my stubborn refusal to give up. I've looked into fixing this thing for years now. Best Buy told me it would be $800 (EIGHT HUNDRED!!) to fix it because it had to be sent off, taken completely apart and then put back together again. Various computer shops gave me estimates ranging from $60 to $150, the former coming from some punk kid who tried to scam me. He said it would be $60 including parts, ordered the part (which I paid for) and had it shipped to me and then the night before the repair he tried to jack up the price to over $100, claiming he hadn't known what distance he would have to travel and needed to recoup travel costs. Had he factored in travel costs and learned how to use Mapquest before he gave his quote, I wouldn't have had an issue with it but he waited until the very last moment and told me about it via email, rather than a phone call, which made me think he was hoping I wouldn't get the email in time to cancel and would be forced to pay. I figured I'd wait until I had the extra cash and take up one of the other shops on their $100 estimate. I never really had the cash, so it just sat alone in a closet. After the incident with the shady kid, I attempted to open it up and see if I could repair it myself but I couldn't get the casing off of the bottom of the laptop. So it just sat alone in a closet. Until my cousin took it down to her place in DC hoping her work buddy could fix it. But he got fired and they had a falling out. So it just sat alone in a (much nicer) closet. The cousin took a tumble off of her bike a few days ago and I came down to help her get some stuff organized and we got to talking about the laptop again. My original plan was to repair it and give it to my mom, who doesn't have a computer and can't afford to get one. Finally accepting that this thing would likely never get fixed, I decided to look into getting her a refurbished one for Christmas. I don't like using credit, I hate being in debt to anyone, but figured if I were going to use it then this would be a worthy cause. Then I had a lightbulb moment last night and decided to see if I could fix this thing myself, give it one last try before deciding to just toss it. After a good Google, I realized that the new charger port did not have to be soldered into the motherboard like I originally thought. I know how to solder but had never done it in an electronics context and didn't have a soldering tool anyway, so that had kept me from really digging deep into how to fix it. Now that it was obvious I only had to take out the old charger, plug in the new one and put everything back together, I was cautiously optimistic about fixing it. And it was an adventure.
There are a million little screws that attach laptops to all of their innerworkings. And you have to keep track of those million little screws or else you're...well, screwed. It was these screws that foiled my attempt at repairing it the last time, but on this occasion I was determined to fix the thing. I finally got it apart and found the plug for the charger port. It unplugged easily but getting the little plastic part where the cord of the charger attaches out took FOREVER. Literally forever. By which I mean about two hours. It was attached to a metal part and was wedged in there pretty good so it was two hours of moving it around and trying to pull it out. Once I finally got it, I couldn't figure out how to get the new one in there because of the metal part holding everything together. That took another hour, more screwing and unscrewing and a lot of prying from a screwdriver. Somehow, I still don't know exactly how, I got the thing in there. I stopped to take a break before reattaching everything and then plugging it in. Moment o' truth. It's either going to fire right up and the mission was a success, or it was going to remain a black screen and the dream was dead. It turned on. It booted. It's been on for a few hours now and is working just dandy. It looks dated, the keyboard feels weird and there are a million things I have to update and delete, but it works. And I am tres impressed with myself. I don't often pat myself on the back for anything but I'm stoked about having done this. As I always say, anything is possible through the power of Google.
The plan now is to update the memory, get a new battery and possibly a new hard drive and still make it a Christmas gift for mom. It kinda works out because she's comfortable with the operating system it has and she probably won't even fill up the hard drive it has now. But I know she'll likely keep it on her desk and treat it like a desktop so I can get her a usb mouse, an external hard drive and that's that. Hopefully it gets her through the next few years. And another upside is I can add, "computer stuff" to my Mr. Fix-It list. Awesome.
