Trouble with a space bar

As someone with shortish fingers, I happen to enjoy typing on my laptop’s keyboard. Unfortunately, that’s not an option right now, because my space bar started sticking a few days ago. Popping the bar off and cleaning it didn’t help, so now I’m waiting on a replacement keyboard.

That’ll be fun. I’ve never replaced a laptop keyboard before. To be blunt, the videos I’ve seen for this model make it look like a PITA. There are rivets to be removed.

While I was shopping, I picked up a few other laptop parts to fix a few nagging issues that have developed this year since the parts weren’t expensive: the keyboard, of course; a front plate to replace the one I let get sticky because I wiped the rubbery surface with alcohol, not realizing I definitely shouldn’t do that; and a new fan, because the current one rattles every so often for no obvious reason.

The problem I’ve run into is that computers aren’t improving at the same rate as they used to, and I bought what I thought was a good computer at the time in 2012, and well, it must have been very good, because I can’t buy a better computer than the one I have for anything like the very reasonable $700ish I paid for this one in 2012.

If the parts work out, that’ll be $57 for a nice little refurbish job on a computer that I’m still happy with and that probably has a couple of good years left in it. And I won’t be forced into Windows 10 or have to finally commit to moving everything to Linux.

It would have been nice if the keyboard had lasted longer, but six years of daily use? Probably not a bad deal.