Lacking
It has now been almost two full weeks since my laptop died. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, let me bring you up to speed. On the night of Thursday 28 December, my computer suddenly and quite unexpectedly turned itself off. Just *poof* and dark screen. Confused as to what would make my computer do such a thing, I carefully prodded the power button hoping to restore the thing to active duty. Instead of the usual Windows loading screen and login box, I was confronted with the unlikely sight of… nothing. Nothing at all. The thing wouldn't even turn on. It lit up the power LED for less than a second, then returned itself to its self-induced coma.
Naturally, I freaked out. I had no idea what suddenly forced my trusty notebook into this condition. Alas, I had little time to poke around — I had to get up early for work the next day and then head back to my parents' house for the weekend. So I packed up my things and hoped for the best. Later that weekend when I had more time to investigate I tried to find out what went so tragically wrong.
With the assistance of the Dell.com troubleshooting section, I was able to determine that my beloved was indeed dead. There's a button combination that causes the three small LEDs at the top of the keyboard to light up in a particular pattern indicating the type of problem the computer is experiencing. Mine lit up as OFF-OFF-ON. That is the pattern of death, my friends, the pattern of death. It turns out that OFF-OFF-ON is apparently the sequence that indicates “processor error,” which isn't good. Seeing as my computer is conveniently out of warranty by now, my father contacted Dell to inquire about my options.
My only real option — apart from buying an entirely new computer — is to send it in for them to diagnose and service. So… since they had a special “Christmas deal,” we sent it in… apparently they're going to try installing a new motherboard to see if that fixes my problem. They claim this process takes 10-12 days, which of course means business days, which means at least two weeks of real-time. In the meantime, I've been without a computer.
Let me repeat that. I've been without a computer. This… this is unacceptable. For someone like me, who spends most of their time on the computer, this is devastating. For the last two weeks, my only connection to the outside world has been my computer at work. Of course, being a corporate computer, it's subject to all the corporate restrictions you'd expect — most mail servers are blocked, so I had a rough time checking my mail for a few days until I was able to access my server control panel (via my roommate's computer) and redirect incoming mail to an account I could access. Sites like MySpace are quite obviously blocked, and I feel irresponsible browsing personal sites while at work anyway. My only other options — without hijacking my roommmate's iMac — are the university library and the public library. Well… my university account is about to expire, and the library conveniently closes right before I get back into town from work. That leaves the public library, which just so happens to be upgrading its computer system and is thus closed for a few days. Besides, their computers are terribly old and unresponsive.
For someone like me that relies on the computer for just about everything, not having one is… rough. I can't check the weather before leaving in the morning, I can't check my email as usual, I can't rip my new CDs or movies, I can't work on webdesign, I can't do much of anything. I've… I've never not had a computer. I might not always have had a computer of my own immediately at my disposal, but there was always a computer around. I can't wait for my computer to come back from the service center — fixed, hopefully. If it's not fixed, I may have to resort to buying a new computer entirely, which I'd really rather not have to do. I don't know if my wallet can survive a hit like that. The computer I've been looking at (in the event of a disaster) is only about USD$800, but that's still about eight hundred dollars more than I'd like to get rid of right now. (My roommate — and quite a few other people — are trying to persuade me to get a Mac, but I've looked into it and it's just not practical for me as a laptop right now.)
I miss my computer.
edit: about 6 hours after writing this entry, I got a call that my computer has now made it safely home and is working again. So I'll have it back in my possession this weekend. Awesome.