Tag Archives: hardware

Keyboard Decline and Fall

I type with both fists. Not literally, of course, but I certainly don’t type ‘correctly’. I can, I know how, just not fast enough. So I just pound it out, so to speak.

If you look at a keyboard I’ve used for some length of time you can see definite wear patterns. Most of the wear is on the left side. The tops of some keys, the home keys especially, acquire an unmistakable shine.

My primary personal machine, an HP laptop (named ‘change’ – I bought it with near a hundred and fifty pounds of coins, no joke), seems to be showing the signs of impending doom. The S key is threatening to roll off the top of its support. When it does – and I’m certain it will – it’ll be the third, no, the fourth keyboard to fail in this exact way. And it’s damned near impossible to repair a keyboard. Since it’s a laptop there will be few remedies: replace the laptop or use an external keyboard.

I think it might be emacs. The control-X control-S sequence, which saves the current buffer, is used frequently. And the act of saving, I suppose, has a finality to it, a purposefulness, that must subconsciously lead to an increased stabbing motion at that poor S key. The left pinky curls down to the control key. (Why IBM moved the control key from its place alongside the A, where God intended it to be, remains a mystery to me.) The index briefly touches the X and then the middle finger – the strongest of them all, right? – jabs at the S. So more often than not the S gets more than its fair share of torque as the inertia of the jabbing finger carries it off the keytop to bang into the bottom of the W.

Oh, I already know how it’ll play out. It’ll break. I’ll worry at it and repair it a few times, but it’ll keep breaking off. I’ll call HP to see about replacement parts, but there will be none to be had. I’ll plug in one of the spare keyboards we have around here, but it’ll make the screen placement bad. And eventually I’ll reach the point where it wastes too much time. I’ll pitch the whole thing and replace the machine. Maybe I’ll name the new one mastercard.

All for some bit of Chinese plastic designed with failure in mind.

iPod Trouble (follow-up)

Well, I kept my Monday appointment at the Apple store, where I hoped that a Genius would be able to resurrect Pam’s ailing iPod. It wasn’t to be.

They called my name right on time, seconds after I walked in. The girl smiled pleasantly as I handed over the device and began the tale. As she deftly worked the buttons and cabled it to a Mac laptop we spoke in elevating levels of geek-speak. Finally, she frowned. “It’s not even taking a charge,” she pronounced. We continued, speaking of ports and diagnostics. Continue reading iPod Trouble (follow-up)

iPod Trouble

Over the past few days I’ve learned more about Apple‘s iPod than I ever wanted to know. Pam’s 60 GB Classic, while in the throes of a low battery condition, suddenly became unrecognizable to her Windows laptop. Not limited to her laptop, every PC in the house reacted to the USB attachment of the slick, black box identically: New hardware found! Your new hardware is ready to use! Unrecognized device! The reaction of the Windows XP Device Manager is quite predictable. It reports no driver for the unrecognized device. Other than the fact that it can’t communicate with the rest of the world, the iPod does everything else quite normally.

You might guess that each manufacturer finger-points at the other, and you would be quite correct. Apple suggests doing everything – including re-installing the OS – to the Windows box. And Microsoft suggests replacing the defective device.

So, a troubleshooting we go! Continue reading iPod Trouble

Ultimate Screen Protection

I was reading recently about a company that sells a screen protection system for the iPhone. Like anything oriented toward Apple products, it’s pricey. The article was compelling because the iPhone strikes me as a device that would be prone to getting all scratched up fairly easily. (For fun, go check out the iPhone episode of Will It Blend!)

Over the years I’ve had a number of PDAs and I’m well aware how necessary it is to employ addition protection to keep prevent screen damage. The product I was reading about sure looked good, but ouch! What a price!

With a bit of digging I uncovered someone else’s research. Go check out the folks at X-Pel. They’re in the business of protecting automotive finishes, but it sure looks like the Ultimate Screen Protector to me. I mean, what do you think is the tougher environment? The highway? Or the scratching of a little plastic stylus?

X-Pel sells small quantities for very reasonable prices. Under the Products menu select Bulk Film by Inch. If this is the stuff used by the iPhone product folks then damn, I sure wish I thought of it first. What a markup! They must be raking in the dough.

I haven’t tried it yet and I don’t know anyone who has, so if you totally hose your screen please don’t come whining to me. Experiment at your own risk. As for me, I’m ordering some film to play with.

Disclaimer: I don’t have any interest in X-Pel or Apple. Before last week I never heard of the former and the nearest I come to Apple these days is that my wife and kid have iPods and come to me for help when iTunes barfs.

Clean Your Laptop’s Screen

Keeping your LCD screen clean reduces eye strain. It may also allow you to run with reduced backlight brightness. That translates directly to longer battery life – the backlight is a heavy consumer of your power budget. So, how do you effectively clean it without causing scratches or other damage? Here’s what I do.

You’ll need some special cleaning fluid. Sure, you could go buy a bottle of LCD cleaner from your favorite office supply store. But I use isopropyl alcohol diluted 50% with spring water. Look in your medicine cabinet, I’ll bet you have some isopropyl on hand already. Next you’ll need a soft cloth. A perfect source is an old, well-washed and worn out cotton t-shirt that’s destined for the trash. Cut two pieces that have no printing – you want plain, unadulterated cloth with no printing, decals or other abrasive matter. Remember, you’ll be rubbing soft plastic so anything abrasive will cause scratches!

Wash your hands. Shut down your laptop; you don’t want it to accidentally power up while you’re working. Dip a corner of the cloth in your solution then squeeze most of it out between finger and thumb. You want the cloth to be well-moistened but not dripping. You do not want droplets of solution to sneak under the bezel.

Pick a corner to start and lightly scrub the screen with the moistened cloth. Then, before the area dries in the air use your dry cloth to polish it dry. Periodically re-moisten your cleaning cloth as needed, and don’t forget to shift to an unused area of the cloth as it becomes used. And don’t let it dry out!

Work your way over the entire screen surface a few square inches at a time. Resist the temptation to do more square inches than you can comfortably clean before it dries in the air on its own. Overlap your cleaning areas slightly and you’ll find that you’ll polish/dry the area’s edges seamlessly. Take your time!

You can use the remaining solution and your cloths to clean the other plastic surfaces of the laptop. Pay attention to the keyboard and other buttons, palm rests and the track pad surface (if you have one of those).

Now that your screen is nice and clean, how do you keep it that way? I keep a can of compressed air nearby to blow the dust off every now and again. You can also use a small camel hair brush – like what photographers to brush their lenses – to gently brush dust off as it accumulates. Never touch the screen with your fingers! You’ll leave oils from your skin which will trap dust on the surface. With a little care you can avoid time consuming whole-screen cleanings for months and months.

A Question of Lubrication

My garage door had been making a little extra noise and seemed to be moving just a little bit slower lately. I did what anyone would do – I checked the log and found that I had neglected my lubrication duties! So I pulled on a pair of latex gloves, grabbed an old towel for the inevitable mess and went to work. I mopped up the old grease from the tracks – the towel collected the gobs of gritty goop nicely. I shot the rollers and the chain with fresh lithium grease. I ran the mechanism several times, paying attention that I’d gotten the grease into all of the moving parts. It appeared that over the years the chain had stretched some and I wondered briefly when it would fail…

And suddenly it stopped, mid-cycle! What’s more, I think I saw wisps of smoke curling from within the motor power head’s housing. Smelled like… and I would later confirm… eau-de-silicon. More precisely, the motor’s startup capacitor was had fried.

Stanley, the manufacturer of the unit, stopped making garage door openers back in the late 90s, the Web told me. Not much chance of finding replacement parts.

Continue reading A Question of Lubrication