Bubble Juice + Coffee =/= Happy Laptop

[CaroPhoenix]

(I tired to post this 3 times using my cellphone, but my cellphone hates me. :cry:)

My daughter's bottle of bubble juice & my coffee-filled coffee cup decided to have an epic battle with each other using my laptop as the arena. The only casualty was my laptop. It's deader than a doornail. Won't even turn on! :eek:

So, called hubby. (Had my first panic attack in a year) and he was like: :roll: while I was like: :cry:

It's at a repair shop which is run by a gaiming buddy of Mr. Rum's. We'll see if anything can be salvaged. I'm typing this from our desktop (which is also on the fritz and I'm surprised it's working for me today).

I'll probably be gone for a week (though I can post from work on Saturdays). Just wanted to let y'all know so no one things I've fallen off the face of the earth! :)

[Amina516]

Awwwww..Im so sorry to hear that. I hate being without my laptop.


My daughter once threw up on my laptop (got all in between the keys).....wasnt fun, it wouldnt work for a while. My hubby dried it out and worked his magic and got it to work for me again. I cried tears of joy. :)



BTW, who won? The bubble juice or the coffee? :D

[PhotoChick]

What is bubble juice?

[draggar]

They should be able to salvage the HDD but it might be worth buying a new laptop.

All they need is a USB-IDE/SATA converter to get your stuff over to a backup / new laptop.

It does suck, though.

I'm willing to bet the casualties are:

Motherboard
RAM
Optical drive (CD-ROM, etc..)

Video should be OK and HDD should be OK (it's in a case).

[CaroPhoenix]

@ PhotoChick: Bubble Juice is stuff you can blow bubbles with. Child Rum loves to blow bubbles so I'm always buying bottles of bubble stuff. I just call it bubble juice. :ashamed:

@ Amina516: I believe the coffee won as it did 3d12+46 points of damage to my laptop. :roll:

@ Draggar: I think you're right about buying a new laptop. I still want the stuff off my hard drive if they can get it. (I have tons of stuff from I-Tunes for my I-pod on the laptop so I want all that back as I don't want to re-buy all that stuff).

I'll be haning out for a little bit this evening. I'm supposed to be ordering dinner online. :D

[DGoddessChardonnay]

It definitely sucks to be without a laptop . . . I went without mine for almost 2 weeks and had to rely on the old cranky desktop that moves slower than molasses in January. (No, didn't spill anything on mine - but the vacuum cleaner hose sucked up my F9 key and I couldn't get the thing to pop back in place after fishing it out of the cup.)

Feels good to be able to zoom online instead of crawl now. Instead of getting the key back on, the entire keyboard was replaced. And my new battery finally came in that was ordered 2 months ago, so now I have a very happy laptop.

I don't know if happy laptops come from California, but I know of one that is very happy in North Carolina.:lol:

[CaroPhoenix]

The motherboard has been fried. :cry: The person quoted me as saying the motherboard would run somewhere between $300-$400 dollars and then labor would be approximately $130 and I'd only be getting a 90 day warranty on the work. With that in mind, and knowing the price of laptops has gone down (and I don't need the 17" monitor or the other bells & whistles :cry:), I'll be getting a new computer.

I will be getting a USB Reader(?) for $20 so I can get the hard drive out of the computer and have it read by either our existing computer or our soon-to-be-new laptop.

Now I have to look at all the electronics ads.

[Amina516]

Yeah , for the price quoted to do repairs, you could get a decent laptop.

Good Luck on the shopping adventure!

Stay away from bubble juice and only drink your coffee outta sippy cups... :lol:

[Mara-chan]

A couple of tips/info/etc...

If your keyboard (or really any electronics) get something spilled on them, it's possible to save them *IF* they don't short out. Disconnect power/batteries and remove anything that's removable (clean seperately if needed) Rinse the device with CLEAN running water (usually distilled NOT tap, seltzer, or saline) ASAP. It helps if you can take the device apart and only rinse the part that got spilled on. Keyboards are easy to clean that way. Cellphones and most game systems too. It's not recommended for optical drives or built in power supplies. THOUROUGHLY dry the device before trying to use it (usually shaking out all excess water and letting it dry a couple of days).

I was able to save a keyboard and a gameboy this way.

A laptop would be harder, but if it was just the keyboard and you were fast enough, you may have been able to save it. If it goes ZZZZTTT and fries out right after the spill, it's dead.

I'd only recomend doing it if you absolutely HAD to get the device working and didn't have spares or a way to replace it. Like if you dropped your cell phone into salt water while on vacation or something.



Not to plug my store, but Staples has a new 17" laptop for $599 with 4gb of ram and a 320gb hard drive. For a little more than what you could get it fixed, you could get a new one.



Depending on what type of drive you have in the laptop and your desktop, you may be able to use existing cables (assuming you may have spares). Laptop SATA and desktop SATA cables are exactly the same. If you have an extra SATA data cable and power connection in your desktop, you can plug your laptop drive in to read the data off it and save a couple of bucks. Assuming you have cables.

If it's IDE... then it's a pain. You need adapter cables or an external drive enclosure that's compatable with laptop (2.5") IDE. Most external drive enclosures are SATA or 3.5" IDE, NOT 2.5" (laptop) IDE.

[lordlundar]

Well, pretty much anything that isn't a removable drive or RAM get's nailed, it's done for. Mainly because everything else is directly soldered to the board and is not usually designed to be removable.

[CaroPhoenix]

This weekend, we're going to be looking for a laptop. We're going to start at the place we took our laptop to be looked at. Mr. Rum did pay $25 for a thingee that will connect the old hard drive off of my laptop (they removed it for us) and connecting it to the USB port of another computer, read it and put like our I-Tunes stuff and my writings back on a hard drive.

Wish me luck! I just want something basic that I can get onto the internet with and also to game on. And a little bit of writing too. Nothing too fancy. :D

[CaroPhoenix]

We got a new laptop. :D

It's another HP but we made sure we go the 3-year plan where it covers everything ... including liquid damage! :lol: Yeah, it's a good thing we've done that. :)

Just wanted to let y'all know. It's a sweet laptop.

It's shiny & has a slightly smaller screen (16 inch instead of a 17 inch). It even comes with its own webcam (I just have to figure out how to work it).