I really hate my laptop right now.

Never thought I would be on my site panel on a school-issued Chromebook.

Anyways, hello Instagram followers and the internet, my laptop died last night. It basically goes like this.

Last night, I wanted to use my laptop, and work on my site some, improve it, whatever. It was fully dead, down to the red battery icon. I plugged it in, and started up Windows. Right when I logged in, BAM. My laptop went black, and my power adapter indicator went from orange to green. My worries began.

I first ended up trying to reset the System Management Controller (SMC), and I tried doing that at least 5 or so times, nothing. And, things got worse, when I plugged my laptop into the charger, and the light didn’t appear.

I went downstairs, got my dad’s charger, and plugged it in to his MacBook Pro. And then swapped it to my machine. The power adapter light stayed in the last state (green), and went off about a minute later. I kept trying this, over and over, and nothing happened. My adapter kept working, so I knew it had to be something with my laptop at this point.

I made sure the battery was connected, so I went inside my laptop, and sure enough, my battery was connected. No problems. I even tried swapping out my replacement battery with the original battery (which had a charge), and nothing. I ended up calling it quits for the evening.

This morning, I woke up, and kept trying. Some internet users said to sit on the adapter, let it warm up, and the laptop starts working again. That, failed. I started to browse around on the internet, and ask some forums, and really, everything pointed to a logic board failure.

I thought that many I reset the SMC too many times, and there might of been many SMC resets in the queue. I tried the same “swap chargers” thing, and really, that didn’t work after 10 or so shots. Cleaned the charging port, nope. I’ve literally tried everything I can, and nothing worked. Best guess, the logic board failed. So did 1 battery screw. That can be fixed easily, at least.

So, I scheduled a call with Apple support for tomorrow, see what they have to say. I’ll bring it into an Apple store next week, so they can run some diagnostics on the thing. Nearby Apple Store availability is limited to the 6pm hour tomorrow, and going on a weekday isn’t a thing. Once they diagnose the thing, I’ve got these options open to me.

First, replace the board myself, for a staggering $650 from iFixit. Even if I went cheap, and decided to get a board with 4 GB of RAM, that’s still $499, and it’s all used hardware. On the plus, I’ll make sure I get the SSD flipped from my old to new board.

Second, do an in-store replacement. I’ve been reading some online, and best guess, a replacement costs around $650-$750, and will probably take around a few days. Not horrible. Bad part, my data could be gone or not gone. I could politely ask, “Could you swap the SSD into the new board?”.

Third, do what the internet calls a “Depot Repair”. Basically, it’s an Apple Store sending out my laptop to get fixed, for a flat rate of around $350. The catch, it takes around 2-3 weeks, and it’ll still cost $350 if they don’t find anything to repair. Same as before, a bad part is the SSD swap.

Fourth, get a whole new laptop. I’ve been doing some searching, and for a ~$700 laptop, I can actually pull off a MacBook Air. The Dell Latitude 7000 has the same specs as my current machine, all for $680 on Amazon, $749 online. Bad part, well, I’d have to buy a drive reader, with whatever technology it’s based on, probably tagging on another $30 to the purchase. It’d be so nice if Apple used a standard drive, I already have one of those puppies that I use on a daily basis.

And since I’m going to an Apple store, the first option will likely cause an in-store war (along with the fact I have an Android phone, and an Android watch), they’ll want me to do the 2nd option (moolah), they’ll go “meh” on the 3rd one, and when I mention the 4th option, they’ll bombard me with lots of coupons.

So, really, with any option I go, I’m gonna be using my school-issued Chromebook, and my phone for things that I can do efficiently on my phone that I also can on my Chromebook for a few weeks, and it’ll cost lots of moolah, or take lots of time, which both suck.

Guess I really hit the bad luck jackpot, or October just hates me.