Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
<...snip...> Do yours still have that pencil eraser thingy that works as a joystick?


Definitely! It's one of the things I absolutely love about ThinkPads.

I can do everything without taking my fingers off the keyboard.

Everything I can do by taking my hand of the keys and putting it on the mouse, everything I can do by taking my hands off the keys and stroking or tapping the glide strip can be done with my index finger on that eraser head and thumb on the buttons under the space bar. My fingers never have to leave the 'nipples' on the F and J keys.

Since it takes tome to move my hands off the keys and back on, having the eraser head is a time saver.

It took a little time to get used to it, but once I did, I never wanted to go back to mouse or glide strip.

Now back to my problem.

I took it to my computer guy, who doesn't have a spare of the new type power supply that Lenovo is using. It connects to the computer with a USBC port.

He asked where I got it, I told him Amazon. I wanted to buy from Lenovo, but they won't ship for 4 days, and Amazon did overnight for no shipping charge.

He told me he suspects one of two things:

1) The power supply might be a forgery knock-off that isn't communicating with the computer properly

2) When the old power supply died, it could have damaged something in the motherboard that lets the computer know it's plugged in.

We talked about my options and it seems the most logical thing to do is get a power supply from Lenovo and see if it's the problem. If the problem doesn't go away with the new power supply, then he'll investigate the price of getting a new motherboard vs. me buying a new computer.

He also said I can probably use this for years on battery just by watching the battery icon in the task bar, when it gets to 20% plug it in, when it gets between 80 and 90% unplug and run on battery.

I've used ThinkPads since the IBM model R30. They are usually extremely dependable and this is the first one I've had unusual trouble with, so I forgive them.

I just retired a 2002 with WinXP from stage. It's still working. I'm planning to put linux on it. The only thing I've ever replaced is the CMOS battery ($5). I retired my other 2002 when I dropped it and the hinge was broken (it still worked). One nighters are hard on gear.

I use 2 ThinkPads on the gig, but bring 3. The third one is up and running all the time, so if something fails, all I need to do is move the USB to Audio interface from one computer to the other. Since 2002 I've done this twice. The first time a hard drive was making noise. I don't know if was going to fail or not, and didn't want to take the chance. The second time the CMOS battery failed and it was easier to use the second computer than to fiddle with the DOS date and time adjustments.

ThinkPads are so reliable, they have two (redundant) ThinkPads on the International Space station that control all the life sustaining systems (oxygen, pressure, etc.)

So I had a power supply fail after so many years of using them. I guess that's a good track record.

Notes

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