I am fed up with this piece of shit Compaq laptop. I never should have bought it. I really wasn't gonna buy it, but it had been about a year since HP bought them out, and I figured that my luck with HP was good, it should be OK.

Well apparently there is a design flaw how the power cable plugs into the laptop motherboard connection. The plug has a 90 degree connector and when it is plugged into the jack, the poor design puts a strain on the jack connector on the motherboard. After awhile the connection was failing and I found if I wiggled the connection "just right" it would do the trick. Eventually the thing just wouldn't work any more. I went to the library and used the public computers to get online and research the problem. Well, I found I wasn't the only person who had this problem. Some one had posted pictures here, here, and here on a way to jury rig repair the connection problem. After looking at what was involved, I didn't want to tackle the job myself. I called one of the local computer places and told them the problem and what I wanted done, They told me they don't do solder repairs but they would replace the motherboard for $600. I laughed at the guy and told him that I wasn't going to spend that kind of money on a year and a half old computer that costs $800 and hung up on him. After not having a computer a while I finally decided to tackle the job. After tearing it to 1001 pieces, I soldered a few wires to the motherboard and eventually got it working. Had a few extra screws left over and one broken keypad, but computer booted up just fine. Only had one problem and that the touchpad mouse didn't work anymore. I think I fucked up the ribbon cable plugging it into the motherboard. So I went out and bought a cheap fellowes PS2 mouse. Well that got me going good enough to use the computer, but most of the time when starting up the computer, the mouse refused to work until rebooting two times. Other times the mouse would start getting erratic and move around and just close open windows uncommanded. Finally I got tired of these little bugs I decided to install some MicroSuck mouse drivers. Well that was a fucking mistake because after that, the mouse wouldn't work at all. You know what a bitch it is trying to find and download mouse drivers online without a working pointer device? Well after a few downloads and about thirty(no shit) re-boots, the mouse and the scroll wheel started working again.

I wonder how long it will last. What I need to do, is go to Florida and get my shit out of storage including the two computers in there, but a road trip to is out of the question for awhile but that is another story.