Blow That Computer!

Some time in the middle of 2008, we bought a couple of Alienware M7700 laptops, which for the most part have been very good.

However, towards June or July 0f 2009, mine started to make strange bleeping noises, and both the Caps Lock and Num Lock indicators would flash a few times – anywhere from two to six times, on average.

We couldn’t find any documentation that would tell us what this meant, although it didn’t look or sound healthy, so we contacted the company we bought the laptop from to ask them.

Weeks went by, and no response, but I thought, no problem, as the bleeping and flashing had stopped.

Until a week or two ago, that is.

Now, we live in a mountainous area of Arizona, where it’s permanently windy, with dust and other crap blowing around all the time, which means all of this stuff settles all over the house all of the time – especially as we have seven dogs as well to help spread it around.

So, we were looking around the laptop, to see what, if anything, we could find, and when we checked underneath, we noticed that all of the fans were more or less clogged up with dust bunnies.

I was all for ordering one of those micro-vacuum cleaners that are especially designed for computer keyboards, but we couldn’t find one that had good reviews, so in the end we bought a dust blower instead – a Metro Vacuum ED500 DataVac 500-Watt, ¾ HP Electric Duster, to be precise.

I therefore disconnected my laptop from the many LAN and USB cables and took the whole thing, including the tray it sits on, outside, connected up the DataVac ED500, and gave everything a really good blow-out.

All sorts of dust and stuff flew out, which was a welcome sight.

Once that was done and I’d reconnected all of the various cables, I powered it back up and so far, a day or so later, not a single bleep or flash.

I realise that this is still early, but I think we may have found not only the cause of the problem, but a good solution too.

So, what do I think of the DataVac?

Well, it’s small but very heavy for its size, it’s dead easy to use and comes with a range of attachments to help you get in small and awkward spaces, and it’s incredibly powerful given how small it is.

If I had one negative thing to say about it, it would be that it does get very hot, but that’s a minor issue when you see how much blowing power this little device has.

I guess that means my lesson for the day is to not let your computer fans get clogged up, otherwise they could not only get damaged and need replacing, but your computer could easily overheat – especially if you live somewhat that gets to over 100 F like it does here.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT:


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