Bruno Kerouanton

Two days ago, I was quite worried because my main laptop refused to start.

It was not as usual, a Windows or Linux problem preventing to start the PC, but really a hardware problem since even the screen didn’t light up and the status LEDs in front of the laptop kept steady. My main concern was that my presentation I had to show at SSTIC (in two days) was stored on it, and I had to find a quick way to extract it from the internal hard drive, convert it from OpenOffice to PDF and Powerpoint, and find a way to bring it with me to Rennes… One of the options was to call the hardware support, but it could take too much time for me. So I started looking around on the web, for another laptop exactly the same model. And I found some on eBay, as I expected. I started looking and even put a bid on one auction. But I finally found a nice company specialized on buying lots of second hand laptops from companies and reselling them, a computer broker. Since they looked nice (both the laptop and the price) and the broker was near Paris, I called them this morning and they told me I could just go there, test the laptop and go away with it (once paid !). So after lunch, I went back to work with my “new” laptop, exactly the same as my previous one, and happy of my new acquisition since I would now be able to finish and show my presentation.

Tonight, I started disassembling the two laptops in order to exchange the memory (I had 1Gig of RAM, I didn’t want to put it away !), disk and other parts… and couldn’t believe my eyes when my old laptop went back into order and agreed to start…

Now, I have two identical laptops ! Well, two more, since I already had two identical Toshiba Librettos…

RESUME : Suite à la panne de mon ordinateur portable, j’ai réussi ce matine à en dénicher un identique sur eBay puis via un broker… Content de mon acquisition, j’ai commencé à échanger ce soir les pièces entre les deux pour m’aperçevoir que finalement mon ancien portable était revenu à la vie ! Et me voilà avec deux portables identiques, maintenant… en plus de mes deux anciens Librettos déjà identiques.