Laptop Returned

I’ve been floundering along for a while with some of the keys on my laptop not working properly. The buttons, F5, 5, T, G, B, -, and [ as well as weird things with the left butterfly or command key. It kept working on and off and it was very annoying.

Back at the beginning of March, I took it up to the Apple Store which is less than 10 minutes away. They replaced the keyboard, but said if that didn’t fix it, it was likely the logic board and without warranty and no extended Apple Care, I’d probably be better off buying a new one. So once they finally got the part in and after 3 trips up there (stupid appointment scheduling), I had it back. It worked fine in the store, but then it wasn’t very warm either. Got it home and the keys flaked out again as soon as it warmed up.

This persisted off and on for a couple more months and we discovered that if you leaned slightly on the right side next to the trackpad, you could get those keys to work again. Not an ideal solution by any means.

Last week, the keyboard and trackpad both stopped responding suddenly. The kids thought the whole computer had frozen and rebooted frequently. Didn’t help. Installed Hardware Growler and learned it was the internal USB for the keyboard and trackpad that were cutting out and back in. Then, it completely quit. Nothing brought it back, but an external keyboard and mouse still worked just fine.

On Saturday, I dropped it off at an independent Apple repair shop and told them the sad saga. They said it was probably the keyboard, and if not, it was probably the logic board. I suggested it might just need a top case since Apple had just replaced the keyboard a couple months ago and it hadn’t fixed it once I brought it home and it warmed up. They didn’t take me very seriously, but agreed to check that step between the keyboard and logic board. They called Monday to say it was the top case. Go figure.

Everything seems peachy now and it’s warm and toasty. It’s such a relief not to have to copy and paste characters as part of normal typing! So now I have no excuses to not be writing and need to buckle down again. I guess I won’t be reading as much as I have the past couple of weeks.