capacitor

HP Elitebook 8440p overheating

by Dave Farquhar
April 28, 2017March 14, 2021

You can get used 8440p laptops pretty cheaply because HP Elitebook 8440p overheating is rather common. Symptoms of overheating include unexpected reboots, shutting down, and bluescreens.

The problems with the cooling system are unfortunate. They have nice keyboards, they’re easy to work on, and they’re reliable otherwise, so they’d be nice laptops if they didn’t overheat so much. Here’s how to improve their cooling so you can get a bargain–buying off-lease business laptops is a great way to save money.

The freedom to fix our stuff

by Dave Farquhar
September 11, 2015July 15, 2017

This week the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial about the right to fix our gadgets. It was surprisingly pro-consumer. The author wrote about a friend whose Samsung TV broke due to $12 worth of capacitors and how he fixed the TV, with no experience, in a couple of hours. I can relate, though I took the easy way out.

He lamented the throwaway of gadgets being unethical on several levels, and I agree. I also remember a time when it wasn’t this way.

Read More »The freedom to fix our stuff

A reasonably cheap fix for a Samsung LN-S2338W LCD TV

by Dave Farquhar
June 3, 2015June 1, 2015

Last year I got a Samsung LN-S2338W 23″ LCD TV at an insanely low price. The catch was that it didn’t behave very well–the buttons didn’t always work, and the TV liked to turn itself off randomly, or sometimes it even turned itself on.

It wasn’t haunted–it needed a power supply. Samsung TVs of this era had a recall due to defective capacitors in their power supplies, but either this one never got fixed, or wasn’t fixed completely. But it’s not too difficult to fix it yourself.

Buy as much computer as you need

by Dave Farquhar
April 23, 2015April 19, 2015

Veteran IT journalist Guy Wright advises not to buy any more computer than you need. Wright was a prominent Commodore journalist, so he’s been thinking this way for literally decades. I grew up reading the magazines he edited in the 1980s and 1990s–yes, really–so it’s not surprising that I would agree with him.

I saw a couple of points worth clarifying.

Tinkering isn’t dead, but it is changing

by Dave Farquhar
February 12, 2015December 4, 2018

When Radio Shack announced its bankruptcy, I read more fears that the age of tinkering is dead than I read laments for the store.

I follow the logic, because Radio Shack was the only national store chain that ever tried to cater to tinkerers. But I don’t think people abandoning Radio Shack means tinkering is necessarily dead. I have plenty of indications that it’s still very much alive, but it’s also very different from how it used to be.

How to open an Asus Memo Pad 7 HD and fix the battery

by Dave Farquhar
January 19, 2015September 10, 2017

My son’s Asus Memopad 7 HD would not power up or charge, and my earlier non-invasive solution wouldn’t fix it. Here’s how I opened it up to disconnect and reconnect the battery.

Always try holding the power button and volume down button first because that’s easier (see the link above for details), but if that doesn’t work, proceed to open the case.

While you’re in there, you can also fix an issue that may be causing the power or volume buttons to be hard to press or malfunction entirely. Dropping the tablet a lot makes this happen. If you have young children, you probably understand.

Another malady these tablets can develop is a battery with a question mark when charging. This will sometimes fix that issue as well.

How to open a D-Link GDS-2205 5-port gigabit switch

by Dave Farquhar
January 16, 2014January 6, 2014

I have a D-Link GDS-2205 switch that I picked up cheaply. It turned out it was cheap because it didn’t work. But I thought I’d try to open it and look for bulging capacitors, since that’s a common problem with low-end network equipment.

Opening these boxes is tricky, but not impossible.

Beware the Black Friday electronics

by Dave Farquhar
November 28, 2013October 4, 2018

Ars Technica ran an aptly timed article today called How to talk your family out of bad consumer electronics purchases. It’s definitely worth a read, to steer you away from bad Black Friday electronics.

There’s a great tip in the article. If a doorbuster item has a model number that isn’t available the rest of the year, you don’t want it. That’s a good rule.

Read this if you have a D-Link router

by Dave Farquhar
October 15, 2013August 3, 2017

Leave it to a security vulnerability to interrupt a perfectly good discussion, but it doesn’t get much worse than this. If you have an older D-Link router, it’s possible to completely bypass the authentication on its administrative web interface.

An SSD data loss issue–and how to prevent it

by Dave Farquhar
March 3, 2013August 3, 2017

Longtime reader Dan Bowman–probably my very first reader, come to think of it–sent in this article from Infoworld regarding SSDs and data loss in power failure.

It’s not theoretical. I’ve seen it. I also know how to prevent it.