What Being without a Computer Has Taught Me

Over the past few weeks, our family computer has been randomly turning itself off and each time it turns off it’s been taking longer and longer to reboot. Last week it failed to turn back on at all and so we’ve been without one since then. I’m actually borrowing a friend’s computer to write this post!

So, what happened?

To be honest, we don’t know for certain but have opened up the case and taken a look at the motherboard, it’s likely been a fault with the capacitors. The caps were bulging and there appeared to be some leakage of brown fluid from them as well. This is commonly known as ‘the capacitor plague‘, which is the cause of a lot of computer failures!

Luckily we didn’t lose our hard drive completely and were able to transfer the remaining data onto an external hard drive. Thankfully.

What have I learnt from this incident?

Back up often.

We were lucky that the data on our hard drive wasn’t corrupted. But, if it had of been, I would have lost all of my saved work (both blogging and freelance) and years worth of photographs.

We’ve since bought two external hard drives – one for us a family and I’ve also bought one for my work. You’ll be glad to have all your work readily available and it gives you the opportunity to work from other computers, such as a friend’s or at the library.

We rely a lot (too much?) on technology.

Freelancing. Blogging. Listening to Music. Our computer is essentially my life and I used it for pretty much everything.

I’m lucky enough to have a friend willing to lend me his computer to use in an emergency. Even if doing has so has been tedious; plugging in the external hard drive, uploading my files, getting my work done as quickly as possible so he could have his computer back(!), downloading my work back on to the external hard drive…, etc. But what if I didn’t have that option at all?

I wasn’t glued to a screen.

Being without a computer has meant I’ve been doing other things such as reading and going out for a walk. So there is a positive to being computer-less! 😉 Having a break from a screen once in a while is definitely a good thing.

Repairs can be expensive!

A computer repair can cost anything from £30 for the initial inspection to £600+ for a new computer (depending on the specifications you need).

We never thought about having an emergency fund for electronics so don’t have the money readily available to buy a new computer. At least not for a couple of months. This can be devastating if your computer (or laptop) is your livelihood or only source of income.

Have an emergency fund!

Following on from the above I am going to start planning for the future and set aside a small amount each month for computer or laptop repairs.

My friend has offered to build a new computer but this will take a couple of months, so I will be without a means of blogging for the foreseeable future. Apparently blogging isn’t what my friend classifies as an emergency use of his computer, lol. But I will be back!

I wish I’d taken a photo of the bad capacitors.

Has this ever happened to you? Have you been without a computer or laptop for a long period of time?