The perils of press row (my laptop is #@!*%ed)

I suppose I can add to this.

I was sitting courtside at state high school game not so long ago. And, of course, my laptop was out and open. Five minutes into the game, a loose ball, trailed closing by two players from opposing teams, comes bouncing directly my way. One kid slams into my laptop, then me and we both tumble to the floor.

The laptop, which is my own, is toast. I end up having to spring for a new one myself. Spent around $500.

 

A couple years ago during the MAC women's basketball tournament one of the players tumbled onto someone's computer and broke it, and knocked a full cup on soda onto the reporter. I was just a couple seats down, so I felt very lucky that day.

 

Keep your laptop in the press room...take your notes and write from the safety of the press room...or guard your computer like it was your first-born.

 

That's a nice idea, but I doubt you'd get off that easy. I'd be writing on my steno pad and filing by phone, I'm sure. I've grabbed a handful of foul balls in MLB pressboxes, including one that ricocheted off the facing right behind the first row of the press box and as I caught the rebound my hand carried into my laptop (fortunately not very hard). Saved myself some money on that one by catching the ball. I usually avoid the work laptop just because it simply isn't as fast and I'm not good enough on deadline to take the extra minutes to do what I need to do on a Brontosaurus laptop.

 

Do you have insurance?
Can you turn in a claim?

You might run it by the publisher about a replacement .. I know, CNHI .. Sucks man... good luck though.

 

This. It's your screen that died, not your hard drive.

Another option is to remove the hard drive from the laptop and buy an enclosure. After you've recovered your data, you have a spare external hard drive as a parting gift.

 

You could also hit up ebay for a new screen.

 

If some of the data you need isn't back up, it sounds like it's just your monitor that's damaged, so if you get a new laptop, all of your data can be extracted from the old hard drive. Depending on what brand, the HDD is likely on the right side with tiny screws. Just don't remove it while you're computer is on.