Here in Brisbane (a few weeks ago now…), we had about a week of storms. Most would just pass by, maybe drop some hail, and lots of thunder and lightning.

The storms changed, what was shaping up to be a quiet week, into a busy one.

I replaced about 4 failed power supplies.

One customer had his PC and router fried (covered by insurance)

Another customer had his laptop power supply damaged… Also an insurance job… which is odd, as a laptop power supply should be inexpensive to repair except:

The laptop is an Acer Aspire 1700 (with no battery… it wasn’t even sold with one). This one of the weirdest laptop I’ve seen… Its huge and heavy:

• A 17″ LCD display
• A 3.5″ hard drive (ie a normal hard drive)
• Normal DDR RAM (not the usual SODIMMS)
• A normal Pentium 4 CPU (not a pentium M or a low-power substitute)
• A 19V, 8 Amp power “brick”… ie 152 Watt… most store power supplies seem to max out at 120 Watt… and to top it off, the power socket in the laptop is a non-standard shape (a large round metal shield with 4 pins within it (arranged in a square shape)…

Why would any company design such a laptop?