Laptops

Anyone who has read my previous stuff about laptops will know that my old Acer with its broken hinge threw its hand in a while ago. Being without a laptop is pretty frustrating as I am forced to use my main old desktop machine which is upstairs.
Luckily, my mate is a bit of a magpie when it comes to computer bits and, having been notified about my predicament, he has delivered a couple of lappies around to me.
Not state of the art, but not exactly old slugs either. The one I am currently using is a Toshiba Satellite M30, which has a 1.6 gig Intel M processor and an  nVidia graphics chip - so not too bad for a freebie! I have upped the RAM from the 512Mb which was in it to a gig (I had some old sticks here so put in what I could find). The only snag is a broken hinge on one side - which seems to be a common fault with these things doesn't it! It is possible to fix, but a nightmare involving stripping the entire lappie down.... so it might just stay broken!

The other laptop is actually much higher spec - it is a HP one. Unfortunately,  that one is currently awaiting repair. It works, but seems to shift into a "limp mode" where it slows to a crawl (e.g opening Windows Control Panel just gives the torch thing for literally minutes and minutes before - if you are lucky - it displays the CP). Three or four indicator lights on the laptop also flashed each second....
We did some research and it seems this is a fault which can be caused by power supply issues. Several folks report that another AC power supply (or running on battery) fixes it. I can't try the battery as it is dead, but we did have another HP laptop available with the same power adapter! Connected that one and booted the machine - only to discover the same problems were still there....
Initially confused by this, we looked at the actual sockets on the two machines to see if there were any differences. Surprise - the faulty laptop socket was mashed completely. The plastic parts were broken off (one bit fell out as we looked) and the connectors were broken and bent. Seems the laptop was limping with good reason!  Luckily, my mate happens to have a similar laptop available for spares (it has a busted screen) and he has pinched the socket from that one to fit onto my laptop. A small snag has arisen meantime - his soldering iron isn't man enough for the job, so a new one is ordered. Hopefully we can sort the laptop with this socket!  Fingers crossed - I will report back once it is up and running (or not!)