Tuesday, February 2, 2016

New Year, New Laptop


Recently, I encountered an author's worst nightmare. Okay, maybe not worst, but one that probably ranks in the Top Ten.

My laptop died. I mean, literally. I had taken it to the library, and, when I returned home, I plugged it in to charge the battery. Everything seemed fine. So I went upstairs.

When I returned to my office, the screen was black and the power was off. I disconnected the adapter and tried turning the laptop on with only the battery. No luck. No luck, either, removing the battery and only using the adapter.

The DH took the computer apart, and we determined one cause to be the voltage regulator. Repaired it, but there seemed to be other issues, and we finally decided -- after a few days of troubleshooting -- that it was time for a new PC.

Now, a lot of people would be excited at the prospect of getting a new PC. I like my laptop. Have had it for six years. But I've accepted I need to say goodbye. Hopefully, the hard drive wasn't damaged, so I'll be able to transfer the files.

I'm not worried about losing files, since I store most on Dropbox, OneDrive, or on a secured personal storage cloud.

Needless to say, this incident has temporarily affected my writing. For the first time in a few days, I'm finally able to get back to my revisions. Part of it was the troubleshooting and doing research on computers. The DH has decided he's going to continue experimenting with the DOA laptop.

Meantime, I'm looking forward to the new one coming in. Not looking forward to putting the programs on, but it could have been a lot worse.

2 comments:

Sara-Jayne Townsend said...

At least you had a back-up of your work! When my first NetBook died abruptly a few years ago, I wasn't using a cloud-based back up. I had copies of my manuscript, because I'd transferred them all to the laptop, but I lost all my notes and the feedback from a recent writing session because I hadn't backed any of that up anywhere.

From that point on, I've been using DropBox.

Commiserations on the demise of the old laptop, and good luck with the new one.

PamelaTurner said...

Thanks! We hooked up the old laptop's HD to the new one, and I've recovered every file I needed. But yes, I back up to DropBox, OneDrive, and to a personal server system here at home.