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Cat + water + laptop = bad news
On Friday, about a half-hour before we were scheduled to go out of town for three days, I was using my laptop when our black-and-white cat Rascal tried to jump up on my desk. Well, he didn't quite make it, and a flurry of scrambling around for balance at the edge of my desk progressed. Unfortunately, a glass of water was occupying the same space at the same time as his paws...
...water which was promptly knocked over, right into my laptop keyboard.
At first, I thought it had mostly gone on the desk, since the laptop seemed fine for 5-10 seconds & the desk was pretty soaked. But then the laptop just died. I tried turning it back on immediately (as it turns out, NOT something you're supposed to do), no dice. I went online via Donna's computer, and the general advice was to let it sit and dry out for a few days. Unfortunately, after we came back from our trip the Vaio was still DOA, so I'm back to using my old Dell Latitude (circa 1998) and looking for a good laptop deal to come along.
Lesson: either don't have any liquids near or above a laptop, or at least make sure they have lids on them.
What makes this more frustrating is after having put a couple hundred dollars into the machine last June to fix a common overheating problem, it had been working hummingly since then. Alas.
...water which was promptly knocked over, right into my laptop keyboard.
At first, I thought it had mostly gone on the desk, since the laptop seemed fine for 5-10 seconds & the desk was pretty soaked. But then the laptop just died. I tried turning it back on immediately (as it turns out, NOT something you're supposed to do), no dice. I went online via Donna's computer, and the general advice was to let it sit and dry out for a few days. Unfortunately, after we came back from our trip the Vaio was still DOA, so I'm back to using my old Dell Latitude (circa 1998) and looking for a good laptop deal to come along.
Lesson: either don't have any liquids near or above a laptop, or at least make sure they have lids on them.
What makes this more frustrating is after having put a couple hundred dollars into the machine last June to fix a common overheating problem, it had been working hummingly since then. Alas.
no subject
Looking under the keyboard, it seems like the water's location was just right to do a number on the motherboard and power supply. I didn't hear any crackling or smell smoke at the time, which gave me hope that it might come back, but looks like that was in vain. I'll give it a couple more days to dry out and try it again, but it looks very doubtful at this point.
If it were a newer laptop I might send it off for repairs, but as a 5+ year old model it just seems smarter to spend the money on a new machine, especially with prices being as low as they are nowadays.
On the "good news" side, I had just completed a backup to CD three days before, so the loss of files was fairly minor. I'm seriously considering adding a DVD writer to my next computer, since it seems able to back up a much bigger chunk of the drive (4.7 GB vs 700MB?) at one time.