Blog Action Day

Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment.

We had a small contribution to make. Today we announced that we will be using Cornstarch Bio-Degradable Peanuts for shipping from now on.

Cornstarch Bio-Degradable Peanuts

We now use Cornstarch Bio-Degradable Peanuts for shipping items.

The peanuts are available from our shipping supplier, Uline.

These are Uline's fastest growing peanut. Specs:
* Decomposes in water leaving no toxic waste. FDA approved.
* Static-free organic cornstarch.
* Dispenses and vacuums like traditional peanuts

Google Groups AbsoluteRaleigh

Finally. We created a Google Group a year or two ago and were never able to log into it. Hundreds of people have signed up to get announcements from our newsletter and watch the Google Group. Today we sat down and figured it all out. We would be embarrassed to mention this except for the fact it really wasn't completely our fault that we were unable to log in. We even had the correct username and password, so yes, it really is a long story.

Anyways. The Google Group AbsoluteRaleigh may start to take more shape in the future, but for now it primarily serves as a announce only mailing list. You can join our group by visiting our Google Groups AbsoluteRaleigh page, or pick up the RSS feed here.

Laptop Bulb Repair

A Dell B120 laptop came in this week from one of our local customers here in Cary, NC. (She mentioned that our directions page was very helpful.)

The B120 had been working just fine until it was dropped about 4 feet. She picked it up and there was no image on the screen. Oops. She used the laptop with an external monitor for for approximately a week and then decided to get the laptop fixed. Some store had quoted her around $400 for a new LCD (they’re only 275 here) and told her that there was no way to fix it. Her son in college informed her she likely just needed a bulb.

We do not necessarily refer to it as a bulb here that often, but a backlight is actually a bulb. A very hard to get to bulb.

Anyways, we replace backlights here for a flat fee of $149. Here are details on our backlight repair service.

We’ve also published a backlight repair FAQ.

Anyways, this “laptop bulb repair” went well.

Another Dell Inspiron 700m fixed!

Another Dell Inspiron 700m notebook came in this week. We get quite a few of these in. They are a very portable, lightweight laptop. These are usually here for one of our Inspiron Repair Solutions but this one had water spilled on it and the motherboard was damaged beyond repair.

Our customer had received a high quote from the manufacturer and also paid another computer store for incomplete diagnostics. The other “repair center” was not able to tell them if anything else was damaged during the accident. Discouraged, they went home, went online and then they found us. We were able to test the unit and inform the customer that their hard drive, memory, battery, etc. was ok, so if they wanted to repair the machine the only piece they needed to replace was the motherboard. On top of that, we were able to blow away the other quotes they had received. They OK’d the repair of the 700m notebook and we even had a motherboard in stock.

Another happy ending.

Dell Inspiron 1300 Laptop Repair

A Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop came in for repair this week.

It is basically a Dell Inspiron B130 with a Celeron chip in it instead of a Pentium M.

This one had a bunch of problems. Our customer told us that the unit’s battery would not charge, that the unit would randomly shut off and that they had blue-screen errors.

Upon inspection we discovered that the battery was dead. This is why the battery would not charge. As for the unit shutting off, this was due to the power jack being loose; we repaired that with one of our flat rate repairs: power jack repair. As for the blue screen errors, the hard drive was also bad. This was likely due to the laptop shutting off while in the middle of something or it could have just been from the laptop being bumped around or perhaps it just died of natural causes.

With our affordable rates the laptop was worth repairing and is now back up and running, ready for action.

ASUS A8T Laptop Repair

An ASUS A8T laptop came in for repair this week. It was no longer powering on. The user told us he had installed Windows a few times recently but kept having problems.

Indeed, the unit would not power on at all. A quick check revealed that the power button was stuck in an odd position. We repaired the power button and the laptop powered right up. It loaded Windows and there was an error regarding a missing file. Whenever a file is missing we test the hard drive. A hard drive test revealed that the hard drive ha some bad sectors; this explained why our customer had to keep reloading Windows. The A8T is normally a reliable laptop.

A power button repair and a new hard drive and this A8T is ready for action again.

Gas Leak Sparks Cary NC Fire

From WRAL (here):

A gas line break at the intersection of Kildaire Farm Road and Tryon Road in Cary has sparked a fire, authorities said. ...flames were shooting 100 feet in the air and could be seen from miles away....

According to the news, no injuries have been reported.

The fire is located approximately 3.5mi from here.

Laptop Theft

In today's local news, Fayetteville Police are warning the public about laptop thefts after 47 were stolen in various parts of the city. Apparently, several were stolen recently as there is a reward out. Here is a link to the full article on WRAL.

LoJack for Laptops recently started offering service here in the Raleigh area. On their website they state that

A laptop is stolen every 53 seconds from coffee shops, college campuses, hotel rooms and motor vehicles.

Note: LoJack for laptops is software.

We hear from a lot of people telling us that their laptop was stolen. What we hear the most is that it was sitting in their car.

If you have sensitive information on your laptop and need to leave it lying around an option may be to get a laptop with hardware based encryption features. Some ThinkPad laptops started offering data encryption and extra security features like 5 years ago, but we almost never see it activated.

Anyways, keep an eye on your laptop!