My Acer netbook's power jack just broke loose without warning. No way to charge it, now. It's almost 4 years old, and I use it every day, so it's not as if I can get too angry about it. There are Youtube videos up that show how to replace the plug on my exact model, but I'd have to strip it all the way down from the top and bottom (a pain in the neck) and then solder the new part to a cramped circuit board, so I'm going to check out repair costs. There's an independent shop in the next town that had a trailer at the Trenton Computer Fest* for years, so I'll probably stop by.
I'm hoping that the repair will be cheap enough that I can get it done and buy time while I look for a good sale at Newegg or Woot. (Hmmm ... they're Wooting Off at the moment ...)
In the meantime, my ancient IBM desktop (almost 11 years old) has developed odd personality quirks and a wicked sense of humor, so now my online life is getting precarious. (I'm 80% done with building a replacement desktop, but the 20% that's left is the difficult part.)
* The Trenton Computer Fest (
http://electrical-computerengineerin....tcnj.edu/tcf/ ) is the world's oldest (and Largest?) personal computer show, held once a year about 45 minutes from my place. It started in 1976 and, in the days before the internet, was the best place to get computer gear. It has really scaled back in the past 10 years or so, largely due to online competition from places like Ebay, etc. The last time I was there I took my daughter, then 14. She bought an
ANCIENT Compaq laptop (with a 8 GB hard drive) for under $50 (with her own money -- that was important to her). We took it home, installed a low-impact Linux distro and a USB wi-fi adapter, and she was on Facebook that afternoon. I've never seen her happier.
But I'm still bummed about the netbook power jack.