Yesterday ... all my troubles went so far away!

Well, if only the title were true! Not that I am in deep poo or anything despite seeing two single Magpies yesterday. I got my screwdriver out to take a look at the screen on my old Acer laptop (the one I am using for this!): it lurches from normal to garbled at the drop of a hat. When I got to Bangkok the other week, it became seriously garbled. So much so that I thought it would be unusable for my presentations there. Fortunately, the screen is perfectly watchable when linked to a projector, even thought the screen itself remained garbled. So I took the cover of the screen off following advice from a web site and fiddled with wires etc. I was convinced that the problem is a dodgy link or wire. I was right. I found that if I press on part of the gubbins at the top and back of the screen, the image on the screen is stable. I then found that by stuffing something under a piece a little lower down, I can keep the duff connections together. Clearly there is a problem and clearly it is a connection problem. again. It is, however, much easier to set back to normal again.This morning, I am facing a good screen but more frequently than I would like it goes garbled. I will take the back off again and stuff a bit more paper in there to stabilise the screen and then be happier. Apart from that, this Acer TravelMate 3220 is old but a good machine. If I am happy enough with the screen by around midday I will be upgrading the memory to 2Gb from 1Gb and it definitely needs a new battery. A new battery can cost as little as £35 - 40 now. I could replace the screen for around £75 but I don't want to do that: I will be happy with make do and mend for a while yet. I still use this computer because it has my Office 2003 installation on it and when I am demonstrating Excel, for example, the majority of people and businesses I am working with are still using Office 2003. I also use it as backup when ... All of this is in complete contradistinction to my experience with my HP Pavilion tx1350ee laptop. I am going to blog separately on that and I am going to include the two letters I have recently written to them following three major crashes in only 10 months and suffering from their appalling after sales service. DW