11/12/2024, 8:13 PM
those of you who keep up with this site will likely remember the A15 Laptop thing entry, and all of my gripes with it. one of which was that the keyboard was starting to go bad, and would consistently not register keypresses. i said at the end of that entry that i had bought a replacement keyboard module to try and get it fixed, and today it came in. upon opening up my laptop to try and fix it, i quickly discovered something horrific. i said before that the A15 is very repair unfriendly, and they expect you to just buy a new one or send it to Asus themselves so they can fix it (for a fee, of course.) well, i meant that more than i could have ever known, because when i tried to access the keyboard module, it turns out that it's locked in, and you can't take the laptop all the way apart without destroying it. you see, there's these little plastic rivets in place of screws holding in the motherboard, and the keyboard rests underneath said motherboard. the only way to get past the rivets is by breaking them off, which causes irreversable damage to the laptop. ideally, you'd melt the plastic rivets to get access, then re-melt them back once you're done, but you really shouldn't have to do that to do something as simple as replacing the keyboard. so now i'm out the 30 bucks i spent on the keyboard module, which is pretty much worthless, and my laptop still is not fixed. this words entry is a little less structured than the other ones, but that's just because i'm really angry and grumpy right now and want to get my feelings about this out. i'm really upset with this damn laptop for being designed by real life, actual monsters. i'm going to MicroCenter tomorrow to see if my warranty is still valid, and if that doesn't work then my roommate is going to try to break off and replace the plastic bits with epoxy instead. i'll keep you folks updated on how it goes, but i don't really have high hopes for this.
alright, it's currently 6:22 PM on 11/13/2024, here's the sitch: i went to Micro Center and there was no warranty on this thing unfortunately, however i did get a new soldering iron while i was there. the plan is to melt the plastic rivets, get in and change the keyboard, then remelt the plastic bits to seal it back up. hopefully that works? i'm really grasping at straws here.
alright, final update on this situation! it's 11/24/2024, and as of now the keyboard has been successfully replaced! it's a little bit of a messy fix, but my roommate was able to get it installed and held in using JB-Weld, and its been working great! there's a couple things that are a little worse off, my usb-c port isn't perfectly aligned, but i already wasn't using that anyways since it's already kind of broken. still, while i am happy that this thing is finally working normally again, it should not have been that hard to repair. get your act together, asus.