MX Linux Forum

My new laptop got doused with hot tea and is now dead. Babe (my cat) got startled and careened through my legs which caused me to trip and spill the tea. We are fine but the laptop is headed for the recycle bin. I now need a new laptop. I am open to suggestions as to which brand to buy or avoid amongst Lenovo, HP, and Asus. Acer is out because of the headaches this now dead machine presented and MSI is out because the models available here in Toronto are just way to expensive.

Thanks in Advance

Lenovo or Dell.

Chris

Are you sure the laptop is dead? I saved one that has taken a coffee bath.

I believe Lenovos have drip holes in case of spills.
I've never tested on my used Lenovo, but see the water drop icons on the bottom.

Might be OK if left for a week or so to air dry, maybe take out the ram, disk, & battery, set it aside to see if it recovers.

Re which manufacturer, I've been using a HP G62 for a few years without any problems, mainly been running AntiX, (& occasionally OpenBSD).

I've not had any problems with my old Acer netbooks, both been running AntiX, & the occasional other, including OpenBSD & Tiny Core.

cyrilus31 wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2019 1:52 pm Are you sure the laptop is dead? I saved one that has taken a coffee bath.

Yeah, it's been a couple of days and it won't turn on.

mxer wrote:

I've not had any problems with my old Acer netbooks, both been running AntiX, & the occasional other, including OpenBSD & Tiny Core

I've got a couple of old Acer machines that are running like champs, however their implementation of the Insidious (I mean InsydeH2O) Set Up Utility in their new laptops is aggravation personified.

Sorry to hear about the accident.

Thinkpads. I've owned 7 and they are durable, Linux friendly, and they take a beating. There are youtube videos of people pouring water on Thinkpads while they are running--I don't recommend trying it.
I got all of mine off of Ebay, but they are everywhere. These are business class machines that constantly come off of lease and are often reasonably priced because there are so many of them.

Depends what you have to spend etc. What Dell used to be for sheer number of top-end cutting-edge ports, upgrade-ability factors etc for their very high level XPS (now more higher-priced) is what HP is now very aggressively targeting and massively so too.
Very many HP's like the more budget 15-cw stuff or the slightly more upmarket 15-cx stuff come replete with so much inter-connectivity angles like usb-c and multiple usb many 3 or 3.1 ports, all manner of hdmi,dp and dvi stuff, in built hvme ssd plus hdd
good upgrading stuff, pretty good i5 cpus, decent battery, high mid-range gpus etc. Huge minefield these days with so many multiple models almost identical but not quite so. Almost no other OEM comes close to HP atm here, for the complete(st) package for the nicest price.

Need to drill down on the specs and then see what's current and what's maybe on some discount (costco etc), all manner of benchmarks etc. HP was very ropey just recently for UEFI stuff, but no more. Asus always pretty OK on their high-end stuff, Acer on some specific models,
the chinese Lenovo fairly OK, Dell still very good but nowadays very pricey. For ports, connectivity and many other factors just very hard to look past HP now though, I'd think. HP used to skimp on 3 notable areas, but have now stopped doing this.

I would first look very hard at HP and then look at the market as a whole. Whatever pricepoint you have in mind. Presume somewhere can$ 600~1000. HP is positioning itself mostly nowadays that it simply will not be beaten on any premium specs - like ports, ssd+hdd, ram, gpu etc.
Not beaten for price and not to beaten for bang-for-buck. A good starting point I'd like to think. I do like a company that is very aggressive in this way. It's good for us too, as consumers.

HP has been hugely targetting mid-range America (sorry, canada or the whole world actually) this past year, winning back some significant market-share etc. Not all models though (and beware the overpriced last-year special sale duds) and so many subtle differences between models too. You really do need to
get very pro-active these days with each OEM manufacturer having about 50+ models on the market (with about 90% always either sub-par or else over-priced or just out-of-date). I would go HP with no question myself, as so much bang-for-buck from them.

Would have to be the exact best model though, with the 100% best marriage of all possible angles - cpu, gpu, ports, upgrades possible, ram ,ssd etc etc

Update: A friend of mine who is a hardware savant and recent retiree from Celestica is going to take a look at it. I think that it's a lost cause but he says he had success with similar recovery projects when he was still on the job.

Fingers crossed. :)

You should be able to at least salvage some parts like the RAM, hard drive, wi-fi card, and so on.

But like others have said, you can't go wrong with a refurbished Thinkpad from Lenovo if you're looking for a bargain: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad- ... lp_pl_dp_2

Stevo wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 3:20 pm You should be able to at least salvage some parts like the RAM, hard drive, wi-fi card, and so on.

But like others have said, you can't go wrong with a refurbished Thinkpad from Lenovo if you're looking for a bargain: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad- ... lp_pl_dp_2

I have a T410 like that--great machine. Probably worth Amazon's price, but only if in absolute Mint condition. A newer T420 or T430 can be found on Ebay in that price range in very good condition.

The best chance to save any electronics that get wet is to not turn them on until you are sure they are absolutely dry. I've even heard of people washing them with distilled water to clean impurities especially if the wet invader was coffee or sugary drink or anything but water.
The main damage will be caused by shorting the traces on the circuit board so if these are dry before switching on you may recover it. It's why people put phones etc. in rice to absorb water, and maybe wait for a few days to be sure.
Of course if the electronics are turned on when the spill happens there is much less chance of recovery.

That's the one thing I dislike about laptops (OK, touchpads too. I hate them buggars.) With a desktop PC if you spill on the keyboard you just unplug it, rinse it under the tap, dry it as best you can then let it air dry for a few days, plugging in a spare in the meantime and carrying on. At worst case you buy another keyboard. With a laptop a spill means a trip to a repair $hop or to your junk and parts bin.

@j2mcgreg, if you end up having to get a replacement what I think I would do instead of buying a brand-new laptop is get a used or refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad or similar business-class one, then put the cost difference into maxing out its RAM and getting a 2TB HDD for it. That would give you a much more durable, Linux-friendly machine that performs (almost) as well as the latest and greatest, plus lots of storage.

Small electronics you can stick in a plastic bag with rice to soak up the moisture for a few days. Would need a lot of rice and several weeks with a laptop I'd imagine.

KBD wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 10:00 pm Small electronics you can stick in a plastic bag with rice to soak up the moisture for a few days. Would need a lot of rice and several weeks with a laptop I'd imagine.

In that kind of situation a hairdryer is your best friend. As sunrat explained I saved a laptop with distilled water and drying thoroughly.

I got the laptop back and I had to reinstall MX 18.2 and when I went to indicate the "EFi as Trusted" and choose grubx64.efi it asks fo a "Descriptor". I tried just giving it a random name and that failed so I think what it's requesting is the full path. paraphrasing from the Debian wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#efibootmgr ... boot_entry) it is something like this:
Is this correct? or does it need more as in:

I'm guessing the shop may have turned Secure Boot back on. MX doesn't have signed kernel or bootloader so you'd have to go into UEFI setup and disable it.

I saw timkb4cq's post in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=92&t=49867

and then read the linked articles and I think that I have it figured out. Once I'm certain that everything is working as it should, I'll post a step-by-step guide so that other unsuspecting purchasers of this wonderful laptop don't have to dance in the minefield too.

I gave up on the Acer and bought a new HP Probook to replace it. I made sure that the bios for the HP was not an InsydeH20 product before I bought it. I will take Steve0's advice and cannibalize the Acer for spare parts before I turf the carcass.

I once spilled most of a large cup of hot chocolate inside a Compaq desktop. I only retired it years later because it was getting too slow with all the stuff that runs in browsers these days.
I waited about a month before I touched it. At times like that I am so glad I have lots of used computers around to switch to.

Definitely Lenovo. If you find X220 /T420 or any latter version.Hat up for Lenovo

The easiest to clean, without removal any screw HP8470P , or HP8460P .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSjAw-Mckzg

I own a HP8470P . A little bit heavy but very solid.Very easy to clean.No overheating problems(generally stay cool at 35-40 Celsius grade or less) If you find a machine like this equiped with CPU i7 (or CPU i5), mount a SSD for a 20-25 Dollars and you will love it.

The main reason that I chose this particular model is that its bios allows a legacy install (I thoroughly checked the bios before purchase). Moving forward, I know that UEFI is the preferred method, but now I have a proven fall back if I encounter hidden glitches with a uefi install.