gt24
10-31-05, 03:59 PM
I have an older laptop that I purchased a while ago, an Compaq Armada m700 at 500 Mhz. Anyways, this laptop has a metal shell and is a durable old laptop, or so I think.
Anyways, I am using the laptop for school... so yet again I was carrying it around school. Just like my PDA, I carry the device with me. My PDA, being owned for nearly a year, has been dropped nearly 10 times and yet hasn't been effected one bit by that.
Today, my laptop was in my backpack which was sitting on a hook a little less than 4 feet from the ground. The hook snapped (stupid hook) and the backpack fell to the floor. No big deal, right?
Laptop... first off, one of the hinges (metal) was slightly chipped... yay, it is a personality mark! It wasn't cracked or damaged in any way, just now it is showing metal instead of black paint. Look at the other side... and the front panel of my CD Rom is slightly detached. A simple push on the panel reattached it... but it was odd. Open the screen, and the fake touchpad (the touchpad wasn't an option on this model, only the trackpoint) was knocked loose (what the HECK!?). Once again, simple touches reattached it.
Start the laptop and thankfully, the screen is fine. Computer beeps twice, "I/O Rom Error (101)" it says nicely.... In order to make that fine crappy message go away and actually boot my darn laptop, I had to remove and reseat my memory, my hard drive, and my cd rom drive. Luckly, all of these worked when reseated and my laptop booted. How the HECK did all of that fall out from a small drop!?!
Go into Ubuntu Linux, set up networking (via ethernet) later on in the day. When I tried to start Firefox, my computer HARD LOCKED. Rebooting, ANNOYED, I get back into Linux... which now says that I have no network card or modem... :bang head
Go to Windows, yep I'm having "hardware difficulties" with those pieces of equiptment. So, I flip over my laptop, open up the networking area, take out the networking module, reseat the networking module... NOW it is fine. Oh, COME ON!!
So, now I hope my darn laptop is working perfectly fine... it seems to be though. My question to the forum is this... how the HECK do you manage to keep these darn fragile laptops going? One drop does this much damage? At least it was superficial (everything became unseated). A friend of mine had a similar age laptop, heavier though, in a laptop bag that fell 3 feet had their screen BREAK. Accidents happen... but I seriously don't want these "accidents" destroying my laptops.
How the heck do you keep these things alive? What can I do to prevent every piece of my laptop from flying apart... also prevent anything from getting broken? I am glad that I only have a 500 Mhz laptop as opposed to something really pricey!
Anyways, I am using the laptop for school... so yet again I was carrying it around school. Just like my PDA, I carry the device with me. My PDA, being owned for nearly a year, has been dropped nearly 10 times and yet hasn't been effected one bit by that.
Today, my laptop was in my backpack which was sitting on a hook a little less than 4 feet from the ground. The hook snapped (stupid hook) and the backpack fell to the floor. No big deal, right?
Laptop... first off, one of the hinges (metal) was slightly chipped... yay, it is a personality mark! It wasn't cracked or damaged in any way, just now it is showing metal instead of black paint. Look at the other side... and the front panel of my CD Rom is slightly detached. A simple push on the panel reattached it... but it was odd. Open the screen, and the fake touchpad (the touchpad wasn't an option on this model, only the trackpoint) was knocked loose (what the HECK!?). Once again, simple touches reattached it.
Start the laptop and thankfully, the screen is fine. Computer beeps twice, "I/O Rom Error (101)" it says nicely.... In order to make that fine crappy message go away and actually boot my darn laptop, I had to remove and reseat my memory, my hard drive, and my cd rom drive. Luckly, all of these worked when reseated and my laptop booted. How the HECK did all of that fall out from a small drop!?!
Go into Ubuntu Linux, set up networking (via ethernet) later on in the day. When I tried to start Firefox, my computer HARD LOCKED. Rebooting, ANNOYED, I get back into Linux... which now says that I have no network card or modem... :bang head
Go to Windows, yep I'm having "hardware difficulties" with those pieces of equiptment. So, I flip over my laptop, open up the networking area, take out the networking module, reseat the networking module... NOW it is fine. Oh, COME ON!!
So, now I hope my darn laptop is working perfectly fine... it seems to be though. My question to the forum is this... how the HECK do you manage to keep these darn fragile laptops going? One drop does this much damage? At least it was superficial (everything became unseated). A friend of mine had a similar age laptop, heavier though, in a laptop bag that fell 3 feet had their screen BREAK. Accidents happen... but I seriously don't want these "accidents" destroying my laptops.
How the heck do you keep these things alive? What can I do to prevent every piece of my laptop from flying apart... also prevent anything from getting broken? I am glad that I only have a 500 Mhz laptop as opposed to something really pricey!