Michael: Not Quite

The Lagunas road
Is a slithering siren
That leaves one exhausted.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

About 8 months ago my little Nextbook tablet decided not to connect to the internet any more. It was just over a year old so I didn’t want to give up on it, pitch it, and spend money on a new tablet if it could be repaired for a reasonable cost.

Here, in Volcan, it was suggested that I take to Aidy’s in David to have it checked out. The charge was only $5 to give it a look over, so what the heck.

 But after Manuel, the repairman, and I exchanged numerous phone calls for a good three weeks, I decided to pull the plug on his attempts to find the appropriate part.

Instead, I took it to the states with me and gave a good old U.S. of A. repair shop a crack at it. The repair shop in San Clemente charged me  $50 bucks to look it over and after they did, they suggested I purchase a USB drive internet connector for $50, and voila, the problem was solved.

Seemingly.

Shortly after I picked it up the touch screen no longer worked and the screen wouldn’t rotate. I could use it one position with a mouse, but that kind of kills the whole convenience aspect of having a tablet. It was too late to return to the shop in San Clemente, so I decided once back in Panama I’d give Manuel another go at it.

I left it with him a few weeks ago and didn’t call until a couple of days ago.  To my surprise Manuel said it was as good as new. Yesterday I picked it up. The charge was $25. Today I tapped in the wi-fi code off our router at home and my little chubby Nextbook was once again fully operational.

Or so I thought. As they say in football, “Upon further review…”. At the store when Manuel demonstrated that it was working again and when I first got it home everything seemed hunky-dory. But then last night I decided to detach the touch screen from the keypad and that’s when I discovered it won’t work that way.

Why? I wondered. But that didn’t take long to figure out. The USB port with the gizmo that’s now providing the internet connection is on the keypad. Once that’s disconnected the screen loses its internet connectivity.
In essence, what I now have is a mini-laptop.

In total it’s cost me $130 to get to this point. That’s it. I’m done for now. The Notebook new cost a little over $200. It’s still useful and after all this fuss I’m in no hurry to shop around for a replacement. I’ll try to work around it’s new shortcomings, after all I went most of my life and was quite content without a tablet. But damned, it sure was a pretty amazing little device to have when it was fully operational.