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a tale of two laptops
So once upon a time there was an Averatec 3200 laptop. It lived with me for the first semester of law school, and then five days before my first exams I spilled a cup of tea on it. Now, this wasn't the first time I'd spilled something on this computer, and at the time Averatecs were really new and nobody local could repair it and it took over 3 weeks to ship/repair/ship after the first spill and I didn't have that kind of time, so I went out and bought an hp pavilion ze4900; basic but serviceable (six months later the sound failed, and last spring the hard drive crashed, but I had an extended warranty so that was neither here nor there).
But back to the Averatec. Every so often I'd turn it on just see if it was still broken. And then one day five months later, it wasn't! And so, as it was way lighter than the hp, it again became my primary laptop.
But it was not without its flaws. Namely, the bastard had a tendency to overheat. After browsing averatec support forums and discovering this was a common flaw, I fiddled with the voltage and made sure the fan was never blocked. Still, it would get very very hot and eventually the power connection jack seemed to get loose, so that sometimes the connection between the power cord and the laptop would get interrupted and I'd have to twist it around until it found a happy new position or something. Still I persevered! Until last night when the power cord jack started SMOKING!
My battery was almost fully charged, so I had time to transfer all my files to the hp. But now I'm trying to decide what to do with the Averatec. CompUSA sells them now, and so probably can repair them as well, but that's more than a hundred dollars, more than I want to spend on a computer that, despite its Lazarus-like powers of resurrection, has generally been more trouble than it's worth. There are all kinds of instructions available re: how to fix the problem yourself, but that would involve things like soldering (huh?) and, well, taking it apart (less of a problem than the putting it back together), and I'd still probably need a new power cord, $60.
Or - and I'm clearly leaning toward this one - I could just remove the hard drive from the Averatec, buy a case with a USB connection (about $40), and have myself a back-up 40g hard drive, something I've been wanting anyway. The down side would be that I'd no longer have a back-up laptop, and I'd really grown to appreciate the sense of security that gave me.
Bleh.
But back to the Averatec. Every so often I'd turn it on just see if it was still broken. And then one day five months later, it wasn't! And so, as it was way lighter than the hp, it again became my primary laptop.
But it was not without its flaws. Namely, the bastard had a tendency to overheat. After browsing averatec support forums and discovering this was a common flaw, I fiddled with the voltage and made sure the fan was never blocked. Still, it would get very very hot and eventually the power connection jack seemed to get loose, so that sometimes the connection between the power cord and the laptop would get interrupted and I'd have to twist it around until it found a happy new position or something. Still I persevered! Until last night when the power cord jack started SMOKING!
My battery was almost fully charged, so I had time to transfer all my files to the hp. But now I'm trying to decide what to do with the Averatec. CompUSA sells them now, and so probably can repair them as well, but that's more than a hundred dollars, more than I want to spend on a computer that, despite its Lazarus-like powers of resurrection, has generally been more trouble than it's worth. There are all kinds of instructions available re: how to fix the problem yourself, but that would involve things like soldering (huh?) and, well, taking it apart (less of a problem than the putting it back together), and I'd still probably need a new power cord, $60.
Or - and I'm clearly leaning toward this one - I could just remove the hard drive from the Averatec, buy a case with a USB connection (about $40), and have myself a back-up 40g hard drive, something I've been wanting anyway. The down side would be that I'd no longer have a back-up laptop, and I'd really grown to appreciate the sense of security that gave me.
Bleh.
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