My laptop died this weekend.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-11, 20:46

Well, not actually dead. Let's call it severely handicapped. Accidentally spilled a little beer on the keyboard. Have done that once or twice before in the 4-5 years since I bought the thing. Only thing it did was knock out the backlighting of the keys. This time was different. Despite immediately soaking up the ounce or so with paper towel it went berserk over time. Worked fine Saturday after it happened but went haywire Sunday morning. Went to enter my password to get back on the thing and the keyboard started entering characters all by itself at random intervals. Took about 10 minutes to finally login, hitting the backspace key repeatedly to clear the characters it was entering.

Tried to post this thread yesterday with the laptop instead of my phone. Proved very challenging because of the keys that were out. At first it was b,n, the period key, and the space key. Clever dude that I am used spellcheck and character map to make the post readable. But the keyboard took over before I could post it. The period key would randomly start entering shitloads of periods without touching it. When I did touch it it did nothing. The t, y, and backspace keys went out, followed by others. The last straw was a key I needed for the laptop login password.

Don't post here often from my phone (find it sort of PITA and I'm not talented enough to post pics or links from it) so went and got a new laptop this evening from Micro Center. It's a cheap-ish Dell I3..decided it's all I really need at home. Keyboard layout much different than my old Dell I7, including a numerical keypad. Gonna take some getting used to. Also going to take some time to get all my shit the way I want it. Hate that part of a new puter.

#frustrated

by **y2kMgrad** 2017-12-11, 21:02

I feel your pain.

Surprised it wasn't a Samsung.

by **kingstonlake** 2017-12-11, 21:19

Get a Vizio

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-11, 21:44

y2kMgrad wrote:I feel your pain.

Surprised it wasn't a Samsung.

People bag on Dell all the time but I've had pretty good luck with them, even back to days I spec'd their servers and workstations for purchase. Hard to expect any laptop to last more than about 4 years. No experience with Samsung laptops. Decent experiences with Toshiba. HP makes great printers but there's no way I'd buy another HP laptop or desktop.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-11, 22:13

gHost Spartan wrote:
The Pantry wrote:People bag on Dell all the time but I've had pretty good luck with them, even back to days I spec'd their servers and workstations for purchase. Hard to expect any laptop to last more than about 4 years. No experience with Samsung laptops. Decent experiences with Toshiba. HP makes great printers but there's no way I'd buy another HP laptop or desktop.
Dell back in the day was great. Not sure how good they are now. I only use Macs

Confess to not having much experience with Mac. Apple is not a preference in industrial 3D modeling.

by **tGreenWay** 2017-12-11, 22:28

The Pantry wrote:Well, not actually dead. Let's call it severely handicapped. Accidentally spilled a little beer on the keyboard. Have done that once or twice before in the 4-5 years since I bought the thing. Only thing it did was knock out the backlighting of the keys. This time was different. Despite immediately soaking up the ounce or so with paper towel it went berserk over time. Worked fine Saturday after it happened but went haywire Sunday morning. Went to enter my password to get back on the thing and the keyboard started entering characters all by itself at random intervals. Took about 10 minutes to finally login, hitting the backspace key repeatedly to clear the characters it was entering.

Tried to post this thread yesterday with the laptop instead of my phone. Proved very challenging because of the keys that were out. At first it was b,n, the period key, and the space key. Clever dude that I am used spellcheck and character map to make the post readable. But the keyboard took over before I could post it. The period key would randomly start entering shitloads of periods without touching it. When I did touch it it did nothing. The t, y, and backspace keys went out, followed by others. The last straw was a key I needed for the laptop login password.

Don't post here often from my phone (find it sort of PITA and I'm not talented enough to post pics or links from it) so went and got a new laptop this evening from Micro Center. It's a cheap-ish Dell I3..decided it's all I really need at home. Keyboard layout much different than my old Dell I7, including a numerical keypad. Gonna take some getting used to. Also going to take some time to get all my shit the way I want it. Hate that part of a new puter.

#frustrated

Given the symptoms you've described, I think your computer was drunk.

by **tGreenWay** 2017-12-11, 22:34

The Pantry wrote:Well, not actually dead. Let's call it severely handicapped. Accidentally spilled a little beer on the keyboard. Have done that once or twice before in the 4-5 years since I bought the thing. Only thing it did was knock out the backlighting of the keys. This time was different. Despite immediately soaking up the ounce or so with paper towel it went berserk over time. Worked fine Saturday after it happened but went haywire Sunday morning. Went to enter my password to get back on the thing and the keyboard started entering characters all by itself at random intervals. Took about 10 minutes to finally login, hitting the backspace key repeatedly to clear the characters it was entering.

Tried to post this thread yesterday with the laptop instead of my phone. Proved very challenging because of the keys that were out. At first it was b,n, the period key, and the space key. Clever dude that I am used spellcheck and character map to make the post readable. But the keyboard took over before I could post it. The period key would randomly start entering shitloads of periods without touching it. When I did touch it it did nothing. The t, y, and backspace keys went out, followed by others. The last straw was a key I needed for the laptop login password.

Don't post here often from my phone (find it sort of PITA and I'm not talented enough to post pics or links from it) so went and got a new laptop this evening from Micro Center. It's a cheap-ish Dell I3..decided it's all I really need at home. Keyboard layout much different than my old Dell I7, including a numerical keypad. Gonna take some getting used to. Also going to take some time to get all my shit the way I want it. Hate that part of a new puter.

#frustrated

Can't believe it, but Blanch was right. You could've used a period towel.

by **Travis of the Cosmos** 2017-12-11, 22:58

Oh man. Terrible. Is there something that’s doing this to all of our devices? It’s not going to change your loss. I’m so sorry.

RIP

by **tGreenWay** 2017-12-11, 23:02

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:Oh man. Terrible. Is there something that’s doing this to all of our devices? It’s not going to change your loss. I’m so sorry.

RIP

I don't think you mean that.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-11, 23:06

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:Oh man. Terrible. Is there something that’s doing this to all of our devices? It’s not going to change your loss. I’m so sorry.

RIP

Thanks for your concern.

But, on the bright side, this disaster may have saved me from reading more of your stupid soccer posts.

by **Other Teams Pursuing That** 2017-12-11, 23:16

You need to work on your laptop? If not, get a Mac.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-11, 23:58

Other Teams Pursuing That wrote:You need to work on your laptop? If not, get a Mac.

Please explain the advantage. I like not having to switch operating systems when going from work to home.

by **tGreenWay** 2017-12-12, 00:05

The Pantry wrote:
Travis of the Cosmos wrote:Oh man. Terrible. Is there something that’s doing this to all of our devices? It’s not going to change your loss. I’m so sorry.

RIP
Thanks for your concern.

But, on the bright side, this disaster may have saved me from reading more of your stupid soccer posts.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-12, 20:30

More technological misery. Son is on my phone plan. Had his S6 Active stolen at Electric Forest in 2016. No insurance. Been using my old S4 Active (mint condition) ever since and waited to be recently upgrade eligible.

Called ATT Saturday to upgrade both our phones. Chick I spoke with said I could do a BOGO for two S8 Actives. Said it would upgrade my son's phone and add a new line to my plan but that I could cancel the new line and switch the phone to my #. Not my first mobile phone rodeo and I questioned her repeatedly on it. Deal seemed too good to be true. She guaranteed it could be done so went ahead with it.

Checked my debit card account on Sunday. Two charges from ATT. One was expected and I had agreed to...sales tax for the phones. No idea what the other charge was for so called 611. Explained the situation to a customer service rep but they couldn't figure out the extra billing charge. In the end, they agreed the rep I spoke with on Saturday gave me bad info on the BOGO and apologized. Told me to call ATT back when the phones arrived.

They got here today. Called back. Was told the most efficient way to straighten this mess out would be to take both phones to an ATT corporate store. There's one nearby. Got an appointment set up tomorrow evening.

btw...the bitch that talked me into the bullshit phone BOGO also talked me into switching to U-Verse. Found out later she failed to tell me there was a $340 installation fee. Appointment cancelled, but I still feel like an idiot.

by **tGreenWay** 2017-12-12, 20:38

The Pantry wrote:More technological misery. Son is on my phone plan. Had his S6 Active stolen at Electric Forest in 2016. No insurance. Been using my old S4 Active (mint condition) ever since and waited to be recently upgrade eligible.

Called ATT Saturday to upgrade both our phones. Chick I spoke with said I could do a BOGO for two S8 Actives. Said it would upgrade my son's phone and add a new line to my plan but that I could cancel the new line and switch the phone to my #. Not my first mobile phone rodeo and I questioned her repeatedly on it. Deal seemed too good to be true. She guaranteed it could be done so went ahead with it.

Checked my debit card account on Sunday. Two charges from ATT. One was expected and I had agreed to...sales tax for the phones. No idea what the other charge was for so called 611. Explained the situation to a customer service rep but they couldn't figure out the extra billing charge. In the end, they agreed the rep I spoke with on Saturday gave me bad info on the BOGO and apologized. Told me to call ATT back when the phones arrived.

They got here today. Called back. Was told the most efficient way to straighten this mess out would be to take both phones to an ATT corporate store. There's one nearby. Got an appointment set up tomorrow evening.

btw...the bitch that talked me into the bullshit phone BOGO also talked me into switching to U-Verse. Found out later she failed to tell me there was a $340 installation fee. Appointment cancelled, but I still feel like an idiot.

Damn, dude, you're going to be a prime target when you get really old. My advice is to cancel cell and landline services when you turn 65. And hang a No Soliciting sign on your door.

by **y2kMgrad** 2017-12-12, 23:29

The Pantry wrote:More technological misery. Son is on my phone plan. Had his S6 Active stolen at Electric Forest in 2016. No insurance. Been using my old S4 Active (mint condition) ever since and waited to be recently upgrade eligible.

Called ATT Saturday to upgrade both our phones. Chick I spoke with said I could do a BOGO for two S8 Actives. Said it would upgrade my son's phone and add a new line to my plan but that I could cancel the new line and switch the phone to my #. Not my first mobile phone rodeo and I questioned her repeatedly on it. Deal seemed too good to be true. She guaranteed it could be done so went ahead with it.

Checked my debit card account on Sunday. Two charges from ATT. One was expected and I had agreed to...sales tax for the phones. No idea what the other charge was for so called 611. Explained the situation to a customer service rep but they couldn't figure out the extra billing charge. In the end, they agreed the rep I spoke with on Saturday gave me bad info on the BOGO and apologized. Told me to call ATT back when the phones arrived.

They got here today. Called back. Was told the most efficient way to straighten this mess out would be to take both phones to an ATT corporate store. There's one nearby. Got an appointment set up tomorrow evening.

btw...the bitch that talked me into the bullshit phone BOGO also talked me into switching to U-Verse. Found out later she failed to tell me there was a $340 installation fee. Appointment cancelled, but I still feel like an idiot.

Damn that's a rough day. My wife and I still get our phone upgrades free every 2 years from Verizon. No idea why, I think we were grandfathered in to some plan because we've been with them so long. I don't know if I save any money in the long run though or if they just charge me more for my plan. Anyway, hope it works out.

by **Other Teams Pursuing That** 2017-12-12, 23:33

This post was made on a MacBook Air.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-12, 23:39

tGreenWay wrote:
The Pantry wrote:More technological misery. Son is on my phone plan. Had his S6 Active stolen at Electric Forest in 2016. No insurance. Been using my old S4 Active (mint condition) ever since and waited to be recently upgrade eligible.

Called ATT Saturday to upgrade both our phones. Chick I spoke with said I could do a BOGO for two S8 Actives. Said it would upgrade my son's phone and add a new line to my plan but that I could cancel the new line and switch the phone to my #. Not my first mobile phone rodeo and I questioned her repeatedly on it. Deal seemed too good to be true. She guaranteed it could be done so went ahead with it.

Checked my debit card account on Sunday. Two charges from ATT. One was expected and I had agreed to...sales tax for the phones. No idea what the other charge was for so called 611. Explained the situation to a customer service rep but they couldn't figure out the extra billing charge. In the end, they agreed the rep I spoke with on Saturday gave me bad info on the BOGO and apologized. Told me to call ATT back when the phones arrived.

They got here today. Called back. Was told the most efficient way to straighten this mess out would be to take both phones to an ATT corporate store. There's one nearby. Got an appointment set up tomorrow evening.

btw...the bitch that talked me into the bullshit phone BOGO also talked me into switching to U-Verse. Found out later she failed to tell me there was a $340 installation fee. Appointment cancelled, but I still feel like an idiot.

Damn, dude, you're going to be a prime target when you get really old. My advice is to cancel cell and landline services when you turn 65. And hang a No Soliciting sign on your door.

Phone and cable companies are fucked up beyond belief. Once took me 10 months and countless hours on the phone with Sprint to clear up the bullshit after buying phones at Costco that I returned within the two week tryout they offered. Phones went into ROAM less than a mile from home. Got a bill for around $850 for less than a week of use. Fuckers

by **tGreenWay** 2017-12-13, 01:28

The Pantry wrote:
tGreenWay wrote:

Damn, dude, you're going to be a prime target when you get really old. My advice is to cancel cell and landline services when you turn 65. And hang a No Soliciting sign on your door.
Phone and cable companies are fucked up beyond belief. Once took me 10 months and countless hours on the phone with Sprint to clear up the bullshit after buying phones at Costco that I returned within the two week tryout they offered. Phones went into ROAM less than a mile from home. Got a bill for around $850 for less than a week of use. Fuckers

Trying to fix that shit can just drain the life out of you. Thing is, it's everywhere. There are some banks just as bad, if not worse.

by **Death Roe** 2017-12-13, 08:05

Pantry, just use Straight Talk. It's so easy and cheap. $55/mo for unlimited data on pretty solid network coverage. I love it.

by TheReal_LWS 2017-12-13, 08:22

The Pantry wrote:
Other Teams Pursuing That wrote:You need to work on your laptop? If not, get a Mac.
Please explain the advantage. I like not having to switch operating systems when going from work to home.

It has a cute light up Apple emblem on the cover.

Seriously, don't believe the hype. What I love is people buy these Macs and then spend most of their time in Windows emulation mode. lol!

by TheReal_LWS 2017-12-13, 08:22

The Pantry wrote:
tGreenWay wrote:

Damn, dude, you're going to be a prime target when you get really old. My advice is to cancel cell and landline services when you turn 65. And hang a No Soliciting sign on your door.
Phone and cable companies are fucked up beyond belief. Once took me 10 months and countless hours on the phone with Sprint to clear up the bullshit after buying phones at Costco that I returned within the two week tryout they offered. Phones went into ROAM less than a mile from home. Got a bill for around $850 for less than a week of use. Fuckers

Buying Sprint phones at Costco? You poor bro?

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-13, 10:22

Was probably close to 20 years ago

by **Other Teams Pursuing That** 2017-12-13, 10:36

TheReal_LWS wrote:
The Pantry wrote:Please explain the advantage. I like not having to switch operating systems when going from work to home.

It has a cute light up Apple emblem on the cover.

Seriously, don't believe the hype. What I love is people buy these Macs and then spend most of their time in Windows emulation mode.

Nah, the operating system is just much better to use. The layout and interface is clean. I can usually troubleshoot issues faster on a Mac. It’s all personal preference but to say it’s all about the logo is just weird tech fanboy shit.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-13, 20:45

Went to the local ATT corporate store this evening to try to clear up all the upgrade stuff, as was suggested by a phone ATT rep last night. Store was surprising not chaotic due to the weather. Turned out the guy I talked to couldn't resolve my upgrade situation without approval from his manager, who apparently left at 6pm ...same time I got there. ATT sucks. Not a fucking one of them has access to your entire account record. The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing and vice-versa.

Only good part of the evening was calling Alibi for a pizza. They're almost right next to the ATT store. Went to pick it up and discovered I was the last phone order they accepted before shutting down carryout orders because of the weather. Said they were closing the entire restaurant at 7pm.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-13, 20:49

Death Roe wrote:Pantry, just use Straight Talk. It's so easy and cheap. $55/mo for unlimited data on pretty solid network coverage. I love it.

Will look into it. Do they offer any of Samsung S8 series?

by **Other Teams Pursuing That** 2017-12-13, 20:53

Other Teams Pursuing That wrote:
TheReal_LWS wrote:

It has a cute light up Apple emblem on the cover.

Seriously, don't believe the hype. What I love is people buy these Macs and then spend most of their time in Windows emulation mode.

Nah, the operating system is just much better to use. The layout and interface is clean. I can usually troubleshoot issues faster on a Mac. It’s all personal preference but to say it’s all about the logo is just weird tech fanboy shit.

Also, it comes with a lot better programs ready to go.

by **The Pantry** 2017-12-13, 22:13

The Pantry wrote:
Death Roe wrote:Pantry, just use Straight Talk. It's so easy and cheap. $55/mo for unlimited data on pretty solid network coverage. I love it.
Will look into it. Do they offer any of Samsung S8 series?

Checked it out. My old 6GB ATT plan is $30 a month cheaper for 2 phones. Don't use much data out of WiFi. Lame choice of phones.

by **GRR Spartan** 2017-12-14, 19:06

Other Teams Pursuing That wrote:You need to work on your laptop? If not, get a Mac.

Have had a MacBook for 7 years, about the same time Microsoft and Apple burried the hatchet and came out with MS Office for Mac.

Have never had to go to windows emulation mode. I'm not a lawyer or a health professional needing to read xrays at home.

My in-laws, 55-56 switched to Consumer Cellular. 2 lines, unlimited talk and 10gb/mth is $75. They left Verizon so they had to buy new phones. They bought unlocked android somethngs on Amazon for about $200 a piece and Consumner Cellular mailled them their sim. Beat the hell out of what Verizon was charging them.

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