The Laptop Saga

Yesterday I spent about 10 hours working on my work laptop. It has had problems since late last year connecting to the Verizon network from its embedded card.

I have chatted with Dell no less that about 10 times. They have sent out a tech to replace memory and again to replace the motherboard. They have mailed me parts. I have, against my better judgment, taken apart the laptop to find said parts and put in new ones. I will say, however, that it was a worthwhile experience. I have always kind of shied away from cracking open a laptop due to ignorance of its contents and fear that I would mess it up. It's not that bad, actually, and I feel pretty good about it.

None of these measures, however, have brought this thing back to life. So yesterday I was advised during a Dell chat to "just go ahead and format the drive, then reinstall the operating system". GAH.

Most of the time I spent on the thing was just ghosting the programs/files/etc. on the drive. Although it is a work laptop, I still have iTunes on it, I have some personal stuff on it and I didn't want to lose all that. It took a big chunk of the time to get all that copied off.

Then I install the OS. That alone took about 2 hours. I have no idea why. It's just Vista, not Linux or anything harder. It just took the time it took.

When I got all that done, and the thing was back up, guess what? The Verizon card STILL does not work. So 10 hours down the drain. Sort of.

The saddest part of all this? My boss, the Deputy Chief, told me on Friday that my having a laptop that works is mission critical (since I'm on call 24/7/365) and to just go out on the weekend, get some specs for a new one and give them to him. Instead I tried to rehab this thing. What a dumb/stupid/idiot I am. But I know I would not have felt right until I had done everything possible to revive this one before getting another.

The upside to all this? The laptop is wiped clean of anything I had on it, so if I have to get rid of it I won't have to drill the hard drive. Someone who doesn't need the Verizon connection can have this lovely thing now.

What a laptop humanitarian I am. Kudos to moi.