Saturday, May 16, 2009

Deconstruction

A long time ago, I thought that I might try to fix the faulty power jack on my Dell 600M. After seeing the tech take apart my daughter's 1525, I decided that that was something that would never happen. But since I was going to toss it anyway -- and if you don't think that caused me a pang to the heart (we paid good money for this thing, dammit!) -- you don't know me very well.

So I took it apart. All the screws and snaps I could find, piece by piece. And I found two things.

First, the area around the fan was just clogged with dust. Could this have made that one -- and the 1525, too -- overheat? Well, given that the tech told me that power problems could be caused by overheating, yeah, that seems likely.

Second, the faulty power jack in question is a little tiny thing that looks like it was snipped off the end of a thin paperclip. And that was the source of all of the power for this thing. It fails, your laptop is toast.

I didn't really think it would be triple secured, high-density firmaplast wiring, or anything like that. But that thin, that skinny? Argh. Please don't tell me all laptops are like that, okay?

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