The Beginning

The genesis of this blog is a crashed laptop and a new laptop. This blog will tell the stories of getting Linux to work on the new laptop.

Hopefully, my struggle will help others who might follow in my foot steps.

Here is what happened:

Two years ago, I purchased a new laptop as a Christmas present from my wife. We kind of found the breaking point in the price and bought a nice HP laptop. It was rather large and heavy, but that was okay. It met all of my needs.

During its life, the laptop only had a few issues. Not too long after I got the laptop, the battery went out. I happened to be on a business trip, and after spending a while on the telephone, HP finally sent me a new battery to the hotel, and it worked fine ever since.

After the warranty expired my dogs stepped on the keyboard and popped the cover off of the O key. You never know how many words have O in them until you can't properly press the O key. I took the laptop to Best Buy, and while they said they weren't supposed to, they tinkered with it until they were able to snap the key back into place.

The only other minor problem with the laptop was that at some point, the hinge on the screen cracked. You almost wouldn't notice it except that sometimes it was hard to get the screen to stay at the angle that you wanted. So, it was no big deal.

But, then the power cord quit working. I left the laptop plugged in and on the counter. I came back latter only find it off, and the battery was dead. The first time I thought was a fluke, but it began to happen more and more often. I would be working on it and notice that it was on battery power while I had it plugged in. I could just unplug it and plug it back in to get it to charge again. But, finally, the battery gave out. The battery would not charge, meaning that when it disconnected, the laptop turned off immediately.

I asked a few places including Best Buy, and they all wanted about $200 just to send the laptop off. None of them would work on the laptop in-house. Actually, while waiting in line, there was a lady in front of me with a different HP model that had the exact same problem. The $200 was too much for me to pay for a 2-year old laptop, especially when that did not guarantee that it would be fixed.

And so, the saga begins...