My laptop died. It was 7 years old, so I really can't complain. Everything started to go - the battery had long-gone (the laptop was basically rendered a desktop the last couple of years**), the CD/DVD player stopped working, the soundcard must've gone because the sound got very tinny at the end, and the on/off button gave out...which was what killed the laptop in the end. I took Methuselah to Staples to see if they could quickly fix the on/off button (to give me a chance to save the little bit of unbacked-up data I had on the hard-drive). They were a little surprised that my Toshiba Satellite A70 was still working. Apparently it was the 'dud' of that generation of laptops. Go figure.
Anwyay, the conclusion they came to: not worth it. In order to fix the on/off button, they'd have to take the bottom apart and it would be a couple hours of labour. Instead, they showed me how to remove the harddrive, and sent me to Robotnik to get a casing to put the harddrive (which was still operational) in, with a USB port to connect to a computer to download the data. Best $23 (incl. tax) I've spent in a long time! And now I have a portable HD (albeit an old portable HD) to use as a backup for my backup external HD. Yay!
So, now I'm in the market for a new laptop (as well as a house! *sigh*)
But with a new laptop, I anticipate spending more time in front of my computer, playing...ie blogging. I have lots to share - gorgeous pictures from my vacation at the cottage, fun fishing pictures and other random snippets and bits from life these last few months.
**Tip: If you want to extend your laptop's battery life, remove the battery when the laptop is plugged in for long periods of time. Since I mostly use a laptop as a desktop anyway (the netbook is my portable computer), I'll just store the battery separately until I want to move the laptop around. (This may seem like an obvious tip, but it hadn't occurred to me that I could've been draining the battery while it was plugged in.)
