Two Wrongs

Asus TP300LA After Three Years: Battery Trouble

Asus TP300LA After Three Years: Battery Trouble

I just wanted to put this out there in case people are still interested in reading about my laptop …

I have now used the thing daily for three years, with very few problems, on a grand scale. Recently, it’s started powering off very suddenly. Sometimes, it will power back up again, and sometimes I need to take more extreme measures to start it1 Things that have worked: leaving it plugged in for a few minutes, opening the case and disconnecting/reconnecting the battery, holding down the power button for a few minutes.. When it boots back up, the battery capacity looks fine, as if nothing had happened.

I have not yet isolated the problem. I’m guessing it has something to do with the battery or on-board power circuits or connectors. I’m starting to suspect the connection between the motherboard and battery is bad – whether it would be fixed by getting a new battery is not something I have investigated. For now, I have plugged the battery in slightly harder than usual, and it hasn’t died on me yet.

I’m not actively looking for a new laptop at the moment2 My incredibly fantastic fiancée suggested that I should try to wire up my desktop machine and try using that as a workstation. It has been so good. I forgot how satisfying the clicky blue Cherry switches can be, and how useful it is with a large monitor. but the market looks just as dreadful as it did three years ago. I don’t have very complicated requirements. I would like

I would like to imagine that I could meet these requirements on a $800 budget.

Not so. Those requirements, apparently, describe high-end $1200 Lenovo Thinkpads.

Here’s how things change if I relax various requirements, from most useful to least useful:

So that’s that. At the moment, my requirements cannot be satisfied within budget with the mainstream models. So my options, when/if this laptop gives in entirely, is to either

  1. Get an Ideapad and hope it doesn’t suffer from mechanical failure;
  2. Get an expensive-ish Thinkpad and hope it’s an investment that pays off;
  3. Look into non-mainstream options.

But that! Is an adventure for another day.

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