Okay so my laptop picked almost the worst time for its screen to fail. Yesterday afternoon I woke up the laptop and it seemed to be working fine for a few minutes when suddenly the screen began flickering. Images started distorting and strange black lines appeared on either side of the screen. After about fifteen seconds of this nonsense, the whole thing went dark and that was that. I even ended up semi-disassembling the monitor housing to see if there was a loose cable that needed to be reconnected (thanks to YouTube tutorials) but I didn't see anything of the sort. Apparently it's not a monitor issue.
at least, not THESE kinds of issues
Some quick research on the 'Net determined that the problem lies with something going bad on the motherboard, so I have some decisions to make regarding repair vs. replacement. Two good things about the situation:
- I should be able to retrieve my data since the machine hasn't "crashed" -- I just can't see anything that I'm doing.
- At least this didn't happen next week during finals, or God forbid while I was actually working on school stuff or taking some online test.
So I'm planning on making a quick weekend trip to Columbia to recover my data. I'm really glad I had the sense to back up the entire contents of the laptop last month, but I wouldn't mind having access to my most recent files. I think I'd be a lot more stressed out if I couldn't do that. Lawrence, I'm gonna owe you a drink or two.
Needless to say, postings may be short and/or sporadic at best for the next few days as I get this issue resolved and I get buried up to my neck in final exams.
2 comment(s):
Buy a new computer and get a two-way cable. You should be able to transfer your latest files easily enough. It is typically cost-prohibitive to replace a burned out screen. If you don't want to drop the cash on a full-up laptop, think about purchasing a netbook in the interim.
Thanks Anon :) Someone said that you're supposed to replace laptops every 3-4 years, and mine was right in the middle of that range so I guess it was time anyway. Plus it had started randomly locking up for no good reason (even on the rare occasion when it wasn't running warm/hot). Needless to say I'm using a spare machine right now -- which works well enough -- for a couple of weeks until I get a good deal on a new one.
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