Inverter Trouble

A while ago, the screen on Chris's laptop stopped working. He took it to a computer shop but they were unable to do anything with it, so he bought a shiney new one. I begged the old computer off him, hoping that there were better computer shops in Edinburgh where I could get it fixed for less than the £335 it would have cost to get Dell to do it for us. That was way back in like May. I used the laptop with a monitor for a while but then a bumped a connector one day and that stopped working too, so I decided I'd better get round to seeing if I could get it fixed.

I packed the thing up and took it with me to various computer shops in my local area. The first guy said he would replace the screen for £200 and be done. Seemed alright but I wasn't convinced I wouldn't get a better deal else where, and the guy barely even looked at the computer to see what might be wrong. The next place I took it didn't actually do laptop repairs, and the last place said they would run a diagnostic test for £40 and see what was wrong with it. So they seemed like the best bet.

I totally meant to ask my parents for some money for it, because I was totally skint at the time, but some how it just kept slipping my mind and as the summer came I got too busy to worry about the laptop in its box gathering dust in my room.

Then came the 16th of August and I moved out my flat, finding the laptop and feeling sorry for the poor thing.

Having lugged it back across town again when I moved to my new flat two weeks later, the feelings were less of pity and more of resentment. In my new, smaller (cheaper) room, I needed to use the laptop to make it worth the storage space, and at the end of the month my student loan eventually came through.

On Thursday I took it back to that computer shop again, to see what they could do. In about 10 minutes he had determined the problem - my inverter was broken. Whatever that was. How much will that cost? £35-£70, and a labour charge to fit it. Seemed pretty good to me, compared to Dell's offer of £335!! So he got out his screwdrivers and took off the panelling around the screen. He showed me the inverter and said it was unusually attached - he was worried it was integrated into the screen so that he wouldn't be able to replace it separately. The £ signs rolled across my eyes as I thought about how much that would cost. But he found some more screws and was able to get at the back of the LCD screen, from which angle he could see that the inverter was in fact separate, and I breathed a sigh of relief as he began to screw it all back together.

He said he would order the thing and phone me when it came in, probably Monday or Tuesday. The £109 bill had to be paid in advance unfortunately, so it was rather depressing to part with all that money and still have a broken computer. It was fair enough though. If they ordered the part and I never reappeared then they'd have lost out.

So that was Thursday. You can imagine my surprise when I got a call on Friday morning to say they'd had a really fast delivery and I could bring the laptop in that very day to have the part replaced. Intending to go back to my studying, and to take the laptop in after my lecture later on, I thanked him and hung up the phone. About five minutes later I was too excited to concentrate, so headed over to the shop. I watched the guy take out all the same screws and put them all back in again like he had the day before. A quick test showed everything was fine and I was so happy I could have skipped home!!

So now I have my very own laptop to use - I'll be online a lot more now, so as long as I'm not to busy I think you'll be hearing a lot more from me.

Hope you're all very well,

Love Katie