Annoyed Beyond Words

While I was in Hawaii, my laptop started having an endearing little problem where the screen would go almost entirely black. The first time this happened, I nearly cried until Heather told me to try closing it and opening it back up again. Sure enough, this worked and I was happy again.

Over the next few days of the trip, the black screen effect happened more and more frequently, and sometimes required the screen to be shut two or three times before it would come back on. This routine continued after my return to Michigan until about two weeks ago when it finally refused to come back on. At all.

Of course, all my pictures from my trip were still on my laptop.

Luckily, my new TV I bought back in December has a PC hookup so it can be used as a computer display. It even came with the cord I needed! So, I hooked it up (so I could see what I was doing) and transferred all the needed files to my flash drive so that I could save them on my desktop. Then I contacted Gateway and made arrangements to send it in and have the display fixed. It is out of warranty, so I knew it would not be cheap, but it would still be less than a new laptop that I couldn't really justify buying anyway.

My laptop came back to me yesterday and I was all excited to have it back. I unpacked the box and fired it up, marveling in the now-bright display. But I discovered mere moments later that there was a problem. I no longer had wireless capabilities. It wasn't just turned off... it just didn't work. I didn't even have the little icon down by the time that allowed me to search for networks, so it wasn't just that my own network wasn't working.

So now it has to go back to Gateway. The only good news is that, since this is obviously something that they did when repairing the display, there will not be a charge for repair. It just bugs me that, after just having to be without my laptop for almost two weeks, I now have to send it away for a couple more again.