More laptop woes

My replacement laptop arrived today. It didn’t work. And so the saga continues.

The replacement machine arrived this morning and I made the swap for my old, faulty laptop. I was somewhat dismayed when I saw the replacement as it was covered in scratches and other cosmetic marks and I commented on the delivery man that it looked like it had been through the wars. Still, I need a working machine and I had no option but to make the swap. The first thing I did was to give the case a good wipe down with some disinfecatant wipes. This removed the majority of the surface dirt, although not the scratches. Then I opened it up.

The inside was disgusting. It looked like a laptop that someone had used as an ashtray, or perhaps left it open in a dusty shed for years. It was absolutely filthy. Again, I gave it a thorough clean with disinfectant wipes before then giving the whole machine a further scrub with some isopropyl alchohol to remove the remaining crap. Eventually it was in a reasonable state – although still far from the like-new condition that I’d managed to keep my old laptop in. It really makes me wonder how some people look after things so poorly?

Once cleaned, I took it up to my office to start the process of getting it connected. The first problem I noticed was that it didn’t have a VGA output. While I know time has moved on and such things are passe now, it did mean that I had no way to connect it to the older of my two monitors. The second problem was more significant. Upon powering up the machine I was presented with a message informing me that the power-supply did not have sufficient wattage to power the laptop. This meant I had to call the service desk once more to find out how to proceed. You can only imagine my delight when I was told that they would have to swap out the laptop and PSU as a pair for another machine! I now have to wait until tomorrow for another replacement to be delivered, but with the added annoyance that I spent half-an-hour of my own time cleaning a filthy machine that I’m now going to hand straight back. I’m not a happy person about this.

So, moaning over, I suppose I’d best post a picture on my blog that is supposedly about photography. It’s another from the Clumber Park outing and this one is perhaps my favourite from the roll.