laptop can come a cropper;that’s a great old English phrase that literally
means to fall head-first from a horse but in today’s lingo means to fail
decisively:
Physical breakage.Almost any laptop will be damaged by a fall from a
few feet onto a hard surface. The case could split, the LCD screen could
crack, connectors could break off, and the device could suffer internal
injuries. Cables could become dislodged, the motherboard could crack,
integrated circuits (you might call them chips) could come loose, and
the hard disk drive could grind to a halt.
Water damage.Spilling a bottle of water — or worse, a cup of coffee or
a glass of soda — can literally gum up the works. The liquid can cause
short circuits and sticky keys, or prevent fans, hard disk-, CD-, or DVD
drives from spinning.
Power failure.Electronic devices require electricity, either from a wall
current or from a battery. Electrical points of failure on a laptop include
the AC adapter, which reduces voltage from 110 or 220 volts to a lower
level, usually in the range of 10 to 19 volts. The adapter can fail, or the
computer attachment connection can break off. Within the laptop, a
surge of electricity or a short circuit can damage circuits and compo-
nents. Chapter 2 talks more about voltage and the reduction thereof.
Essential component breakdown. The disparate parts of a laptop have a
different expected lifetimes; some can be expected to work indefinitely,
while others may only be reasonably expected to last a few years. There’s
no telling which part may fail first, but among the more likely are things
like the LCD’s backlight, another part of the display system called an
inverter, exposed external connectors, and the AC adaptor or its associ-
ated charging and power components.
Microprocessor meltdown.The computer’s “mind” is a hybrid of a
microprocessor (often a member of the Intel Pentium or Celeron families,
or an AMD equivalent) and a block of RAM (random access memory).
The microprocessor does the work, moving bits of information from one
place to another and performing certain operations on them; the RAM is
the machine’s scratchpad, where it holds temporary notes on works in
progress. Microprocessors rarely fail, although they can be damaged —
along with much of the rest of the machine’s electronics — by a power
surge or a short circuit.
Memory loss.Now here I’m not talking about RAM, but rather long-term
storage. On most laptops information is semi-permanently stored on a
hard disk drive. Some users may store information on a floppy disk drive,
or on a recordable CD or DVD. I say semi-permanentlybecause each of
these three types of storage are mechanical in nature. A spinning disk or
disc (CD and DVD makers betray their European lineage by using a “c”
Part II: Explaining What Could Possibly Go Wrong ........
