When the chips are down

A view of the mysterious intricacies of the motherboard of my laptop. I've been having problems getting the computer to notice it is plugged in, and these came to a head today when it wouldn't detect the jack plug at all and the battery was running inexorably down. I went to the computer shop where I was told it could be fixed, at a cost of £90 and would be ready next Wednesday.

It's difficult to say which of these pieces of news was more dismaying - with Christmas approaching an unexpected £90 repair bill wasn't welcome news, but the yawning abyss of four days without the computer wasn't an appealing prospect either. I didn't say 'Ninety quid!? For replacing a jack?? Are you taking the piss?' although it was what I was thinking. Instead I opted for the more British approach of saying 'I'll have a think about it and perhaps come back on Monday.'

Back home, I resorted to the questionable instructive advice of Youtube and the internet instead, and proceeded to take the laptop apart completely, since the jack turns out to be the least accessible bit. Having diagnosed the fault (a broken wire where the solder had snapped off) and dismantled an old laptop for a spare part which fortunately was exactly the same, I was faced with a table strewn with bits of computer and lots of little screws, and the worrying thought that it was probably advisable to be more methodical when taking things apart in order to put them successfully back together. Once it was all back together I turned it on with considerable trepidation, and was surprised and delighted to find it had worked. In fact (as you'll know if you are more IT savvy than me) they look more complicated than they are, but I had the strong sense it wouldn't be too hard to do something slightly wrong and make a small problem into a much bigger and more costly one.