Thursday 28 December 2006

Pic of the day: Not the exploded computer, but the old one that replaced it. The king is dead, long live the king's grandfather! (The black box on top is an external DVD drive, since the internal DVD drive died long ago. It is a Fujitsu-Siemens.)

Computer exploded

At first it did not explode as such. It just suddenly turned itself off while I was playing The Sims 2, and with the cutest anime-inspired student I have ever made, in my humble opinion. Be that as it may, it was already so late in the night that I didn't much mind, and went to bed.

I woke again this morning (yay!) and went to the home office. With some trepidation I turned on the power to the computer. And then there was a loud hizzzing sound, orange sparks flew from the back of the computer and sprayed over the table, and acrid smoke issued forth. I very quickly turned off the power again, though it was of course a bit late by then. Can't hurt, though.

I can see the irony in this, that less than ten days ago I gave up on the video card, and now this happened. On the plus side, I had originally thought to bring the whole computer in for the noise. In that case, they would most likely have diagnosed the problem to the video card, and after a long time I would get the computer home ... to have it explode a week later anyway.

The computer is on the heavy side to take on the bus, not to mention that it is a 9 minute walk to the bus I would have taken, and then a 15 minute walk from there to the shop. If I had been into the whole lifting weight thing, I might have done it. But it is a bit late to start with that when the computer explodes. So I called a taxi. It costs a bit, not least here in Norway, but as I said to the driver: I save so much on not having a car, I can easily afford to take a taxi when I actually need it.

I could have saved the expense of a taxi if I had brought only the power supply; it was pretty obvious that it was this part that had blown its fuse. But there are downsides to this as well. First off, I'm not that much of a screwdriver guy. I might get it out, but it is more doubtful whether I could get it back in and get all the parts connected. OK, probably, but it would take a while. And there is still the other reason: The computer is very recognizable, complete with their logo and a chassis not used by the standard models sold in competing shops. There was no question that I had bought it there, and from the parts they could also easily see that it had to be less than two years old, so would be covered by the warranty. A power supply is far more generic. I could have ordered it online, for all they knew. It could be from an older computer, of which I have several. But this way, there were no questions or doubt. And of course, this way they could also check whether any of the other parts had been blown by a power surge, as sometimes happens when a power supply blows up.

The computer will take another week or so to get ready, so in the meantime I moved the previous home office computer back from the living room, which is too cold in the winter anyway. Good thing I hadn't thrown it away, eh? I guess this goes into my new year's resolution, albeit very quietly: Not throw away any computers that may work in a pinch. Such as when the newer computers explode in a shower of sparks...