It was with great sadness that I bade farewell to one of my favourite items of technology today.
In the summer of '03, I was a penniless student, and my parents stepped in and bought me a laptop for classes- I had no choice in the matter, they just came round my place and dropped it off- it was a BenQ Joybook which is a budget model, korean made concrete slab of a laptop.
It was never state of the art technology, but it got the job done- never had reason to replace it, and over the years, the thing which stuck out was its sheer unkillability. When I went on exchange i carted it halfway around asia with me, sent it through baggage handling on multiple occasions, dropped it down flights of stairs, used it in an outdoor bus station in drizzle, and on one memorable occasion dropped it out of a second story window into a snow drift- none of that bothered it in the slightest.
Over time, it ended up with standard cheap laptop problems, like a capacity to rapidly fry your family jewels if you used it as a literal lap top, and a battery life which was actually shorter than the time it took its processor to calculate remaining battery life once unplugged, but it still worked.
A landmark moment came in 2010, when I accidentally poured an entire cup of tea over the keyboard. It made a sort of electronic sneeze and switched off (along with all of the lights in the house.) I dried it off as best as I could, and figuring I had nothing to lose, rebooted. It worked okay for about 5 or 10 minutes, and then shut down again- this time, it wouldn't boot up at all.
I left it for a few days, and tried again, and it seemed to work okay- but some of the keys wouldn't work and finally with a massive crackling noise it shut down again. So I pried the case open and found that the motherboard was still actually under a pool of tea. I sponged it all off as best as I could (leaving soggy tissue inside it) and left it outside to bake for a few days.
After that.. nothing. Plugged it in, and absolutely no response. Left it switched on at the wall and forgot about it, a few days later I was woken up around 3am by the windows chime- somehow in the middle of the night BenQ had woken itself up, cooked off the moisture and booted up- presumably if there was a liquid metal computer in my room it would have fought it to a standstill and lowered itself into a pit of molten metal.
From that point onwards, it worked fine, although the touchpad was out of order so i used a plug in mouse. Still functioned perfectly well in every other regard although it would overheat very easily. Every so often I would step on the screen when I hopped out of bed and didn't look where it was, but that never seemed to bother it in the slightest. There were certain fraying parts of the power cord which gave a nasty shock if you grabbed hold of them.
Over the next year, one USB port after another flamed out, until I was left with an intermittent functioning one I had to jiggle the mouse connection around in. Sadly, that port finally died today, leaving me with a computer with no mouse input at all, and no way of plugging in a thumb drive to transfer files off- I am doing a massive wireless file transfer now whilst typing this post, after which BenQ will be retired with full military honours. Am still amazed at how much punishment it has taken over the years, and am full of respect for the korean factory worker drones who have constructed such an extraordinarily tough beast of a laptop. Even now, the processor is sound, it is just its namby pamby peripherals which have let it down.
I love technology which simply keeps on keeping on no matter what you throw at it, and I am curious to know whether other people have encountered similar unkillable products, whether computers, phones or other?
In the summer of '03, I was a penniless student, and my parents stepped in and bought me a laptop for classes- I had no choice in the matter, they just came round my place and dropped it off- it was a BenQ Joybook which is a budget model, korean made concrete slab of a laptop.
It was never state of the art technology, but it got the job done- never had reason to replace it, and over the years, the thing which stuck out was its sheer unkillability. When I went on exchange i carted it halfway around asia with me, sent it through baggage handling on multiple occasions, dropped it down flights of stairs, used it in an outdoor bus station in drizzle, and on one memorable occasion dropped it out of a second story window into a snow drift- none of that bothered it in the slightest.
Over time, it ended up with standard cheap laptop problems, like a capacity to rapidly fry your family jewels if you used it as a literal lap top, and a battery life which was actually shorter than the time it took its processor to calculate remaining battery life once unplugged, but it still worked.
A landmark moment came in 2010, when I accidentally poured an entire cup of tea over the keyboard. It made a sort of electronic sneeze and switched off (along with all of the lights in the house.) I dried it off as best as I could, and figuring I had nothing to lose, rebooted. It worked okay for about 5 or 10 minutes, and then shut down again- this time, it wouldn't boot up at all.
I left it for a few days, and tried again, and it seemed to work okay- but some of the keys wouldn't work and finally with a massive crackling noise it shut down again. So I pried the case open and found that the motherboard was still actually under a pool of tea. I sponged it all off as best as I could (leaving soggy tissue inside it) and left it outside to bake for a few days.
After that.. nothing. Plugged it in, and absolutely no response. Left it switched on at the wall and forgot about it, a few days later I was woken up around 3am by the windows chime- somehow in the middle of the night BenQ had woken itself up, cooked off the moisture and booted up- presumably if there was a liquid metal computer in my room it would have fought it to a standstill and lowered itself into a pit of molten metal.
From that point onwards, it worked fine, although the touchpad was out of order so i used a plug in mouse. Still functioned perfectly well in every other regard although it would overheat very easily. Every so often I would step on the screen when I hopped out of bed and didn't look where it was, but that never seemed to bother it in the slightest. There were certain fraying parts of the power cord which gave a nasty shock if you grabbed hold of them.
Over the next year, one USB port after another flamed out, until I was left with an intermittent functioning one I had to jiggle the mouse connection around in. Sadly, that port finally died today, leaving me with a computer with no mouse input at all, and no way of plugging in a thumb drive to transfer files off- I am doing a massive wireless file transfer now whilst typing this post, after which BenQ will be retired with full military honours. Am still amazed at how much punishment it has taken over the years, and am full of respect for the korean factory worker drones who have constructed such an extraordinarily tough beast of a laptop. Even now, the processor is sound, it is just its namby pamby peripherals which have let it down.
I love technology which simply keeps on keeping on no matter what you throw at it, and I am curious to know whether other people have encountered similar unkillable products, whether computers, phones or other?
