What Ants Taught me about Laptop Power Adapters

The Short
Ants suicide-zapped my laptop power adapter successfully taking down the adapter with them.

I searched and learnt that other laptop power adapters can be used as long as
1) The voltage is the same.
2) The current rating is equal to or higher than what the laptop requires.
3) The polarity of the adapter is the same.
4) The physical tip is the same.

My old laptop which I thought was partially working is actually fully working, but was acting strange because its power adapter was faulty.

The Long
The Main Event
Another routine morning and it was time to power up the PC for work.  On goes the mains switch and ZAP!  Hmmmmm what was that noise?  Uh oh, there is no power going to the laptop, what's wrong?  Pressed the power button on the laptop and it ran fine on battery power.  Phew!  So the PC is fine,  so it must be a power adapter or cable problem.

When I checked the laptop power adapter, this is what I found.

Wonderful!  Ants killed my power adapter.  Time to buy a new one.  While searching where to get a replacement, I was also researching whether other laptop adapters can be used, since I have an old, partially working laptop with a power adapter.  It has the same tip, polarity and voltage, but the current rating is higher than the zapped adapter.

There were quite a few forum answers and articles out there that said "Yes I can.".  One of the better articles I found was this:
http://ask-leo.com/can_i_use_a_charger_that_provides_the_same_voltage_but_a_different_amperage.html

My lesson of the day was, different laptop power adapters can be used as long as
1) The voltage is the same.
2) The current rating is equal to or higher than what the laptop requires.
3) The polarity of the adapter is the same.
4) The physical tip is the same.

I plugged in the old power adapter and voilà, power is flowing to my PC once more.  YAY!  I am saved.  No need to buy a replacement adapter, but then the plot thickens.

The next morning, I turned on the mains and powered up the PC.  Hey, the battery lights on the PC are blinking! What is wrong now?  I proceeded to check everything from turn on and off the PC several times, removing and reinserting the battery several times and also changing main power points.  The problem was still present.  Time to bring out the big guns, or should I say another gun.

Very lucky for me,  I have another laptop that is fully working complete with TADA! power adapter.  I took this power adapter and plugged it into my main laptop.  Lo and behold!  Power flows once more and the battery was charging normally again.  Sooooooooooooooooooooo, there was a problem with my old laptop's power supply.  Which means I still have to buy a replacement power adapter .

Next day, I acquired a new adapter, tried it on my laptop and all is back to working perfectly.  I decided to get an adapter that was powerful enough to power the old laptop as well, since I knew that adapter was faulty.


Old Laptop New Life
My old laptop is about six years old and it had been working perfectly until last year.  After five years of great service, one day when I turned on the mains power, I heard sizzling noises coming from the battery and the PC would not turn on.  When I removed the battery and just ran it from the power adapter, the laptop worked fine and worked all day.

Next morning.  I tried to power up the PC which already had the battery removed and the PC would not boot.  The power indicator light was on, but nothing appeared on the screen.  I turned the PC off and on again and this time it did power up.  At this point I thought my PC was dying.

Day after day I had to turn on the PC two to five times before it would boot.  One day though, the laptop did turn on first go and I was surprised.  It was a hot afternoon so I thought maybe the PC needed to be warmed up before it would boot.  The next day when I turn on the laptop for the first time, I left the power running for a few minutes with nothing appearing on the screen.  When I turned it off and on again, it booted. So, warm up required before PC would boot.  From this day on I only had to power on twice to get the PC working.

In light of the new events that indicated that this old laptop's power adapter was faulty, I wanted to find out if the laptop itself was working fine.  So, new power adapter, meet old laptop.

I guess I should not be surprised, but with the new power adapter, my old laptop powered up perfectly first go.  This meant that the warm up time which I thought was for the PC, was actually for the faulty power adapter.  I am also happy to say that the new power adapter charged my old laptop's battery just fine.  No sizzling noises.  Unfortunately the battery life only lasts around ten minutes now.  Oh well,  I guess it still makes a good UPS power supply.

Six years on and my old laptop is still teaching me stuff, namely when a laptop starts going funny and there are battery issues,  first check the power adapter!

What's That Crawling on the Power Line?

See for yourself.

$0.01US For 8 Games and a Credit Card Test

GOG.com has an insane promotion of pay anything for eight selected Interplay games.  They said "Pay as little as $0.01--get 8 Interplay Games."  I just had to test it out to see how the credit card transaction would progress.

The transaction went through all good.  My credit provider charges an international transaction fee on top of the foreign exchange rate.  I am happy to say that the international transaction fee was ZERO!  In the end I really did only pay 1 cent for 8 Interplay Games.

So,  there IS something you can buy for 1 cent these days.

This sale is no longer on.

Laser Mice With Blue Teeth

Logitech V470 laser mouse with Bluetooth connection.

Mousing
The laser mechanism is supposed to be much better than the standard optical mechanism.  So far the only improvement I have noticed is the mouse does not cause the pointer to jump.  All optical mice I have used so far, always had the pointer jumping problem.  Other than that, the pointer movement is the same as an optical mouse which is good.

All the buttons and the scroll wheel work well.

The scroll wheel can also be pushed left and right which act like buttons.  These can be configured with the included SetPoint software.  The default setting is to scroll left and right.

Strangely the default configuration for the middle button is to activate zoom rather than being a middle button.

I have played first-person shooters and real-time strategy games with it and it works great.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth means one extra USB port for me.  Of course this is only applicable if the computer comes with inbuilt Bluetooth.  The connection was very easy when following the instructions.

When I was setting up Bluetooth on my current PC for the first time, a warning came up saying that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi can interfere with each other and cause disconnections.  After years of using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi I never knew about this.  It is definitely a topic to consider when choosing whether to use Bluetooth.  Luckily for me I have not had any issues of them interfering with each other.

One disadvantage with a Bluetooth mouse is, it takes longer for the mouse to connect to the PC.  On boot, the mouse takes several seconds before I can move the pointer on the login screen.

Batteries
The V470 uses two AA batteries which makes the mouse slightly heavier than my old optical mouse.  It is still very easy to pick up and shift thanks to the ergonomic shape.

There is an on/off switch to save batteries when the mouse is not being used.

There is an LED indicator that blinks blue when the mouse is connecting and blinks red when the batteries are low.  A pair of fully charged Typ.2,000mAh Eneloops lasted me about 2 months.  From my timings, the LED started flashing red at around 557 hours.  The mouse completely stopped working at around 560 hours.  These timings are not the most accurate since I do sometimes leave the timer running when the mouse is off, and sometimes I turn off the timer and forget to turn off the mouse.


Other Stuff
There is no visible light underneath.  It uses an infra-red laser.



Biases
Before this V470 I have been using a standard 2 button + scroll wheel optical Dell mouse for the past eight years.   The Dell mouse has started showing problems but eight years of service shows how good the Dell mouse was.

I have used Bluetooth connections since 2006 and in Wi-Fi environments.


Update 01/12/2012
I have encountered a strange problems with the mouse recently.  When the PC comes out of hibernation or stand by, sometimes the mouse movement is very laggy.  I have tried turning the mouse on and off, restarting the computer and re-registering the bluetooth connection it still lags badly.  The only solution I have found so far is I need to shutdown the PC completely and turn it back on.  Everything is good after a full shutdown.  Not sure if the problem is with the mouse or my PC.


Update 02/01/2013
In the past month the left button click has been problematic.  On some days holding down the left button does not work, so dragging just lets go and sometimes a single click becomes a double click. This happens on some days and other days it works fine.  I am not sure whether this is the start of the known issue stated here.  I am not prepared to open the mouse just yet, but it is annoying when I cannot drag and drop and double clicks are happening everywhere.



Update 12/03/2013
I am unsure if this is a problem with the mouse or my PC or Windows 7, but half the time when I bring the PC out of hibernation, the mouse would not work.  The easiest fix I found for this was to turn off and on the bluetooth radio on the PC.

Need for Speed Toy Edition

Need for Speed.  You have played the video game, now play with the toys!

I was surprised to see this in a department store.  It is an official EA licensed product line.  I do not know if Mega Bloks requested the license from EA or whether EA requested Mega Bloks to make toys for the game.

The one question I have is, why Need for Speed and not Command & Conquer?  I am sure kids would love the Mammoth Tank!

Outlook 2002 Switches

"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\OUTLOOK.EXE" /CleanFreeBusy
will regenerate the busy days indicators on the Outlook Calendar after a Blackberry sync.

"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\OUTLOOK.EXE" /resetfolders
can fix sync problems between Outlook and a Blackberry.  In my case the memopad to notes.  Special thanks to Michael-D-Clark for the solution.

Here is the full list of switches from Microsoft
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296192