Hire him.

I have had two stressful computer times over the last month. The coffee involved my desktop. Google Earth started crashing it. Since the old Radeon x800 video card has been acting up also I tried upgrading to a more newer model a Radeon HD5770 plus a new power supply. That just did not work at all. After spending all day flipping video cards in and out (the x800 worked sometimes so I really think that my old ABIT KN8Ultra MB has an iffy pci slot). I found a blog that said some older MBs will not post if a video card has 1gb of memory. I wound up using the X800 and telling Google Earth to use OPENGL instead of Directx and do not even breathe on the video card.

I had to go into the desktops innards at least the 15 times that day a just when I had everything working I had to go in on more time and reattach the USB cables to the MB. With that minor operation I got sloppy and did not drag the case out from under the desk. I merely tipped over for easy access. I wound up bumping my head on the keyboard drawer and spilling a whole cup of coffee directly onto the AMD Athalon which then splashed 80% of the motherboard, memory, northbridge, southbridge, and yes the video card. I got a blower out and dried it out as best I could but that computer was dead for 18 hours. Once it dried out it has been running perfectly ever since. For a couple of weeks that desktop had the lovely aroma of coffee.

Now we get to the laptop. It has been dying a slow death for at least six months. Given that it would start up and run for 2 minutes and then shutdown I figured that after five years it was a little filthy and the microprocessor heatsink was hot enough to fry eggs (no I did not try it). Given the recent experience with the desktop I was not that anxious to do to much major surgery on another old computer so I tried the semi-external treatments. The first external attempt was to back blow the microprocessor heat-sink through the case vent. that seemed to work some but not enough. Since the desktop had survived the coffee and it is currently running quite well I decided that I could not lose too much using similar technique on the laptop. I got out a 5cc syringe and fired 6-8 loads of isopropyl/rubbing alcohol back through the heatsink fins and a lot of stuff came running out the bottom fan inlet. Maybe I was looking for a good excuse to buy a new laptop or I was just to frustrated from the desktop experience.

As with the desktop it died from the alcohol water treatment only it did not come back from the dead in 18 hours like the desktop did. That explains the frantic search search for a new notebook for my road trip to Malaysia tomorrow. One reason the innards go soaked as much as they did was that the top of the fan shroud was the motherboard not metal. Ooops

That laptop was dead for 5 days and just before I was heading out of the door to buy the ACER Aspire 5738PG I tried the old notebook one more time. It arose from the dead and it is running great. I have given it a workout all day including heavy boinc computations and multiple manual reboots. The microprocessor heat sink is much, much cooler now and is best described as warm. It is going on tomorrow’s road trip tomorrow. Maybe I will luck out and it will die again in 6 months so I can justify a new one.

If anyone else is crazy enough to try the rubbing alcohol technique which I will admit which is not really recommended, remember IT IS FLAMMABLE. I had the charger disconnected, the battery removed, plus I felt the heatsink to make sure it was cool. When I applied power for the first few days I made sure that it at felt dry inside and had no odor.

Today’s computers can obviously take a lot of abuse as has just been proven in two cases.