[OT] My son's fried laptop

[Richmond]

On 17/03/14 22:39, Bob Sneidar wrote:
> I don’t get any google hits on Samsung NP300E5X-S01 motherboard failures. I am curious, do you have a compatible power supply unhand? Might want to try another one of those. I am also nervous about two laptops exactly alike having failed motherboards. As they say in the military, once is a coincidence. Twice is enemy action! I’m thinking bad power and supplies that do not detect power events.

I think it was simply a case of bad luck.

I am not quite sure where you got the idea of two laptops exactly alike. 
My son's girlfriend's laptop is a quite different make and model.

My son's laptop fried its motherboard on its original power supply.

As the marketing company is going to repair the thing it is really only 
of academic interest.

What is far more interesting to me is why 2 quite different laptops seem 
to have overheating problems with Windows 7.

I do not like Windows that much, and did suggest to my son he might 
prefer Linux.
He did say that he would prefer Linux [having had a desktop PC running 
GNU Musix while he was here in Bulgaria],
and the only reason he HAD to run Windows 7 was that he was required to 
use Sibelius at the University [who had a cheapo bulk license for
registered students] which has Mac and Windows versions, and the latter 
will not run under WINE.

Open Source drop-in replacements for Sibelius are not anywhere near as good.

Funnily enough Sibelius was first developed as a killer app for the 
Archimedes computer; and the fact that Sibelius subsequently put out a
Windows version may have significantly contributed to RISC OS's death 
knell as a desktop system.

Richmond.
>
> Bob
>
>
> On Mar 17, 2014, at 13:24 , Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 17/03/14 22:17, Bob Sneidar wrote:
>>> The palmtop should have a heat sensor that prevents the very thing you are experiencing. If an Intel processor overheats it will shut the computer off. Are you running Linux on these? It may be that Linux prevents the automatic shutdown of the OS.
>> This is a Samsung NP300E5X-S01
>>
>> and it was running Windows 7 ultimate.
>>
>> Richmond.
>>
>>> Bob
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 17, 2014, at 10:41 , Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 17/03/14 17:26, Bob Sneidar wrote:
>>>>> I think it really comes down to the quality of the laptop components, as the prior post suggested, and particularly the display. Everything else in the laptop is not that expensive, but the display might be a higher quality. If it is just a stock LCD nothing fancy, then consider another laptop. BTW it is quite odd for a motherboard to “fry” (barring abuse) in a laptop. Power surges are usually handled fairly well by the external power supplies. Laptop power supplies can afford to drop output power because they run on batteries. I would definitely see if others with this same model are having issues. Might be a lemon.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bob
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Luckily I went over to my accountant who dug out the documents from when I purchased the laptop and it
>>>> turns out to be guaranteed for 2 years; and I bought it 18 months ago.
>>>>
>>>> And, even more to the point, the company I bought it from have agreed to honour the guarantee
>>>> [this being a rare phenomenon in Bulgaria], and have undertaken to repair it and have it up and running within 15 days.
>>>>
>>>> It might be a lemon, but my son did have it sitting on a desk for 7 hours, with no cooler pad underneath it,
>>>> and was working on heavy stuff (Sibelius 7), running Windows 7; so the blasted thing overheated and the motherboard became
>>>> a great-grandmother rather sooner than planned.
>>>>
>>>> If I can have it running Xubuntu, with a cooling pad, that will do.
>>>>
>>>> "Daddy" has already had to fork out for a replacement, so, at least, he deserves his son's cast-offs . . . LOL
>>>>
>>>> -----------------------
>>>>
>>>> Interestingly enough, "the girlfriend" has a much more expensive laptop, also running Windows 7, which went
>>>> the same way after a year. Again; silly girl didn't have a cooler pad; she, also, unfortunately got some pretty nasty
>>>> burns on her legs.
>>>>
>>>> Richmond.
>>>>
>>>>