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Acer, back from the dead

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

My beloved 2005 Acer laptop died this evening - the optical drive was making funny noises; when I popped it out and in, the system died.

I was heartbroken. This ancient, unlovely beast was one of a small handful of possessions that went to Japan with me. Half of this website was coded on that thing, and more than half of the photos were edited there. It's only a lowly Celeron with 512MB of RAM, but it's been enough. And despite the wireless networking subsystem never working properly and the fact that I caused the motherboard to die in 2006--by picking the thing up by the screen--it's been in mostly great shape for all this time. Yes, Kenny prised off some of the keys as a toddler, and yes my wife was using the wrong power adapter and the battery got fried. And yes, I sometimes have to transfer movies to the Apple to watch there because the old Acer doesn't have enough RAM to watch a movie. But still, it's survived six years and the basics all still work fine (and the display still looks great).

So I set about some ten minutes of surgery with a screwdriver and a pocket knife, and lo and behold I got it to boot up. It's now more of a wreck than ever, missing its optical drive in addition to the battery, the original wireless subsystem, and some keys. On the bright side, it's also now lighter than ever.

Let's see if I can keep this thing running 'til the 7 year mark. The way things are going, it might just outlive the company that made it.