Blessed by the Potato

My laptop is a death trap, I must finally come to admit it.

I mentioned the woes I’ve had with this hot, heavy A70 before, specifically the annoyance of having to resolder the power connector thing. The heat it generates must be melting the solder, because I’ve had to redo that joint every 6 months or so after it went the first time, which is really terrible considering the light usage that laptop gets: I haven’t gamed at all on it in the last few years, and my day-to-day computer needs are met by my desktop, so it’s really just for weekend email — i.e., maybe 40 days of actual usage between rounds of having to fix it. Finally, our technical wizard, Lynn, replaced the pin with a bigger copper one he made himself (and, I am convinced, enchanted with ancient runes of power), cleaned up the other two pins, and resoldered it all for me. It’s been a year since that repair and the power connector hasn’t even come loose (the first stage of failure).

I can’t believe he didn’t win the staff award, again, at our annual research day. The judges are on crack for shutting him out.

Anyhow, I digress. In addition to the power connector problem, it’s also a computer that’s prone to overheating and crashing. As it’s aged, normal everyday tasks like surfing the web and checking email seem to tax it more and more, so now it’s overheating and dying after an hour of that, even. On top of that, the power cord now has a small fray in it (and seriously, don’t show this to my insurance company edit or to Wayfare):

Man, this computer is a blazing inferno waiting to happen.

However, it still runs fine: although I can tell it’s using more CPU resources to get the job done, the job still gets done (and still faster than Wayfare’s brand-new netbook). Since I don’t use it much, and don’t need it, I don’t have any plans to replace it in the next year or so, though if I have a job in the fall I will likely find this Boxing Day to be very tempting.

PS: the fray is on the DC output part, which is moderately less dangerous than if it was on the cord going to the wall outlet.