So my work laptop has been crapping out for the past month or so. The first event was when the trackpoint (or as I lovingly call it, the track nipple) started acting up. Left/right movement was fine, but I could not move down and clicking would cause the pointer to jump down about 10% of the screen. That made navigating Windows quite difficult. The laptop had both a track nipple and a trackpad, so I just switched to the pad. Eventually, the pad started acting up so I started using a USB mouse. That made using the laptop anywhere but a desk difficult but was sufficient. Eventually, even that started acting up!

I called the helpdesk and they opened a Priority 1 request. 24 hours later, someone checked out the laptop and decided that it needed to be repaired. Whenever a major repair is needed, they try to find a hotswap. They take a different laptop, switch out the hard drive and any other drives and give that to you. The helpdesk guy said it would be upwards of three days but he would try to find one in fairly good shape.

Just a few hours later, he called and brought over a brand new laptop! It was the exact same model so I didn’t get an upgrade, but my old one had a worn out LCD hinge, it was fairly dirty and lots of the trim was worn off. Today was a good day.