IMS_Blog

Ah dear, just a little list, so that I can moan

• It basically doesn’t work when not powered from the mains. Unpluggng causes it to complain about power supply, a lot, and quickly just die (though not in sync with the battery monitor). Seems the battery is basically buggered then
• If you tilt the screen at certain angles (such as the ones which make it visible, say) then there appears an unbroken vertical green line about a third of the way in from the right. Fiddle with slight adjustments to the screen angle until it goes, or you give up
• I think the touchpad is having hardware issues. This can cause some very strange symptoms in Windows, including killing the keyboard. In order to even get in I’ve had to boot to safe mode, uninstall the hardware, prevent it from trying to reinstall it, reboot, prevent it from trying to reinstall, all of which seems a pretty hit and miss process. I’m pretty certain it’s hardware because booting to linux takes an age, apparently while sorting out hardware stuff, though things do at least work once there Actually it turns out to pretty much be the battery
• The optical drive (DVD writer) is pretty damn temperamental, sometimes to the point of refusing to believe in the existence of DVDs
• The little rubber feet on the bottom have lost sticky, so they keep falling off (there’s actually one missing)

I think that’s about it. Moan over

More: Actually, that third point is pretty serious. It seems to have caused even linux to do…interesting…things (completely freezing in the process of starting Konq, booting, letting me log in, and being perfect apart from complete lack of keyboard…). It’s actually just resolved itself into “working” again under both linux and windows though (although the touchpad itself is out of order, everything else is ok, and nothing is freezing up). Hardware issues, don’t you love them (especially on impossible to take apart laptops).

Gaaah: And now, under windows, the keyboard has suddenly stopped working. I’m typing this using the on screen keyboard. Time for another reboot

Latest: Well, that at least worked. Current situation is a working USB mouse, working keyboard, non-working touchpad (the touchpad is disabled in the device manager, so that’s at least as it should be). We’ll see how long this state lasts…