Quarter Life Crisis
The world according to Sven-S. Porst
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297 words on Hardware
My MacBook came with one of those wobbly trackpad buttons which doesn’t click firmly and thus doesn’t give good feedback on my actions. While annoying to have such a low quality feel in the machine, this didn’t affect me too much in practice as I hardly use the trackpad button because I prefer tapping the trackpad itself.
All I tried to ‘fix’ the problem was that little origami hack which unfortunately didn’t do the trick for me. One time the paper I inserted was too thick – removing the ability to click the button at all, another time it probably was too thin, and then it must have moved while I inserted the battery and then I was fed up. But after I got my new battery last week I noticed that the button’s feel had improved considerably. While that was welcome, I was a bit suspicious about this – having heard about those swelling battery problems people had on some computers, so I had another look. It turned out that the guy forgot to remove a protective foil that is stuck on the top of the battery before inserting it into the computer. And I guess that just has the right extra thickness to make the button a good clicking one.
So while I am tempted to just leave it in there now, I am also worried it might be bad for the system or play a role in the computer running hotter (or at least running its fan more audibly) recently. I guess I’ll have to double check with the repair people again for extra advice. (And since I got the new battery I swear that I have seen screen flicker on the machine again… I really hope this is not going to be an eternal saga!)
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