The Continuing Adventures of Super Whiz Tech Guy

Alternate title: Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?

I have a laptop that has to be six or seven years old. It did a good job for a long time, then I assumed the battery was dying a year or so ago, which was no big deal. It was mostly just an extra machine for whatever web-browsing or homework activity was going on in the house. As long as it was plugged in, it was fine. Slowly, slowly it went downhill, to where it wouldn’t even power on. I had thought about trying to replace the battery. One of my daughters had an iPod a few years ago and when the battery died I watched some intricate, watchmaker, type videos on replacing the battery, but, of course, Apple said to send it in and they would replace it for $50 or some outlandish sum. I never did send it in.

I had seen all the screws on the undercarriage of the laptop and assumed getting into the guts of the laptop would be a similarly complicated endeavor. Some of you are shaking your head at this point. It’s OK. I deserve it. A couple of weeks ago a situation arose where I thought, “It would be kind of handy to have that thing working again.” I’ve watched some Youtube videos on car repairs and they worked out pretty well. So I went to Youtube and searched “change laptop battery.” I found the video below. I know it’s very possible that anyone else reading this knows what I didn’t know. If you don’t know how to change a laptop battery, you should watch this multi-step process:

So, yea. One of those moments:

 

I hope my little computer guru experience gives you a laugh. The laptop seems to be working OK–other than every time it tells me something is out of date and I try to update it, I get the message: “Why the hell are you running Vista?”