How I got my keyboard

[MrDale93]

How do

I have been using my account to document the upgrades I have done/want to do to my T440p, and one of the things that I have mentioned in a previous post is I got a back-lit keyboard and its a bit of a interesting, funny, pointless story and that I may post about it if people were interested to know how it all came about. Well, a grand total of 0 people asked and I am bored, so I'll write it all out anyway.

As mentioned above, this laptop is a T440p. An IRL friend is quite interested in computers and he wanted a new laptop, so on my advice he bought a T440 as he needed a laptop at short notice and that was within his budget. I also want to say he is well aware of how stupid his decisions were that led to me getting a free upgrade for my laptop and he is aware I am posting this here. Hes going to make an account tonight as I have opened his eyes to the greatness of ThinkPads and told him he should definitely join this forum, so no doubt he'll comment on this himself at some point, and when he does I strongly believe he should be roasted heavily.

He bought his T440 and it was flawless. Not a mark on it anywhere and it was pretty clean inside too. He is not a technical person at all but I build desktops and work on laptops for my job so I gave it all a look over, a clean and a re-paste for him, all was well. I completely forgot to have a look whilst he was round at mine but I needed to know what size the slot was on the bottom of the track point so I could get one, as mine had been missing before I'd even got the laptop. Waiting outside school to pick the kids up at home time I messaged him and asked if he would do me a quick favour and '"lift the red track point off of the middle of the keyboard and measure the square hole on the bottom" so I would know what size to get for mine. Less than half an hour later I get a picture on WhatsApp of some circuit board. I'm really confused at this point, wondering what he had sent me. Then I realised, the absolute muppet had pried the trackpad off of the laptop, and the circuit board I was looking at was attached (sort of) to the touch panel of the pad.

I could not stop laughing at this for days, it amused me to no end just how badly he had messed up considering he had been telling me for the 4 years I had known him at this point how he had built Dos computers for his uncle, he was some professional hacker and pen-tester, yet the difference between a track point that I described clearly described as red and in the middle of the keyboard and a touchpad defeated him. He asked if I could fix it, I told him it wouldn't be a problem but as part payment I was within my rights to laugh at him for a little while longer. He laughed, called himself an idiot and agreed that was fair enough.

But it gets better!

The next day he messaged to say he was at work that evening and would bring the laptop for fixing on his way to start his shift. An hour or so later he comes by with the laptop in a bag, and tells me I can keep it. Puzzled, I asked why and he says he cant be bothered with it anymore so its mine and he doesn't want a penny for it. We spoke for a bit and he left for work, so I took the laptop out of the bag to get on with it. It was in pieces. Nothing was attached to anything. Even the screen was taken off. The girlfriend at this point is looking confused asking what the Hell had happened to this laptop that was perfectly fine not 3 days earlier. I rang him quickly and asked, to which he responded saying something along the lines of " I couldn't figure out how to get the trackpad back in, and I thought if I took it all to pieces it would be easier". Even the bezel had been taken of from around the screen, the SSD had been removed, and the WiFi card had been taken out! How he got to the conclusion that this would be easier to get the track pad rebuilt and put back in the palm rest I don't know but there we go.

Most of it has been salvaged and I think I've still got most of it sat ready to get either rebuilt or reused in something else, but the back lit keyboard is now installed on my laptop, along with the bright red track point in the middle of the keyboard, NOT black and underneath the space bar.

Hes alright now, computer wise. Hes got a T450, a Sony Vaio and an old Acer that is used just for messing about with. He's a good person, but I cannot fathom how he got the point of completely stripping a laptop down to the individual cards on the board.


On a separate note he didn't like the three button touch pad on the T450 and he wanted to swap that for the clunkpad in the T440p as it suited his usage better, so I swapped them over and that's two upgrades for the total price of £0 with the added bonus of getting to laugh at a friend.