It was christmas eve, and I have a movie date with my wife. We saw Yes Man (Jim Carrey as the leading role) and you may read her post about it. But before can rest our butts on those cushy theatre seats, we had to run a few errands.
My mom-in-law's laptop just past its 1st birthday when its screen busted. The damage? uniquely, an internal plasma shatter - you can see some liquid-like lines on the screen, but it's not on the external. Anyway, it took her a year later to finally decide it's worth a repair :p and that was 5 weeks ago.
So now, we're picking it up at Highway Point (Acer-appointed service centre), at the Berjaya Times Square. A total RM862 for the entire Acer Aspire 5050 screen replacement: RM762 for the screen, RM100 for labour. It took couple of weeks for the laptop to get back to us. But I guess since it involve going to and fro between the actual service centre and the pickup centre, that is more than justified.
Okay, so that was only our first errand. For the next items on our list, we had to split: she stays in the building and look for our friend's wedding gift and I went across two blocks to Low Yat plaza for a couple more tech stuff. As I step outside, whoa, people really do celebrate christmas away from home. There were flashing red hats, foam sprays and money exchanging hands between avid celebrants and occasional hawkers. There are also food hawkers, but I've digressed enough.
Without much bargaining, I bought a two-satellite speaker (RM39) and an Acer power adapter for RM100. Wow, up to now you probably thinking, "Gees, Acer surely has one too many defects". But to their defence, the owner's children don't really know how to appreciate a budget laptop ;) It's cheap for a reason... don't hammer it like a Thinkpad.
Anyway, this reminded me of my own. I have a BenQ laptop and after 18 months of constant beating, my power adapter gave up; this was also about the same time the fan gave up. Mind you that in 2005 it seems hard to find spare parts for BenQ laptop so I had to go for a universal power adapter that can fit most models. That time, it cost me RM180: a fortune if you're a student :p
