Originally Posted By: charper This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Well today the worst thing happened to me. In the middle of an inspection my laptop went belly up. It died. Appears that the mother board is fried. According to Sony they will repair it for $800.00 plus. Well I ordered a new Dell and should receive it next week. In the mean time I am taking my hard drive from my old laptop to a PC store and they are going to transfer all the data to some type of media that I can load on my new laptop. Monday I will do an inspection without my laptop. Does anyone have any suggestions or hints or help from similar experiences that might get me by for the next few days? I typically do my inspections and print the report on-site. Now I’m gonna have to take pictures and lots of notes and come back to my office to do the report on my desktop.
Originally Posted By: jrivera This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Sorry to here about that. But what I do is use a checklist and scribble anything, like brand name, serial numbers on the checklist or something that I cannot readily get a picture of and then I’ll just take a picture of everything, usually about a hundred plus pics.
Hopefully the camera doesn't crap out, I only have some much skin to write on.
And finally if my pen blew up I would just go home and take a nap.
Originally Posted By: dedwards This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Charles,
Sorry to hear about you laptop but if you don’t mind I think your story illustrates for all of us that we need some kind of contingency plan to fall back on when our “technology” lets us down. I have found myself up the creek w/o proper flotation or motivation myself a time or two. I always carry a back up camera now (actually two) because I had one that was giving me trouble even though it was new. Just quit working for no reason and would start working again half an hour later, again with no help from me. Grimlins I guess. I got to thinking about all the other things that I could find myself without and started giving myself a backup in almost every area. Spare batteries, flashlights, etc. I personally carry a couple of spare inspection checklists (my own creation) that I have made at the printer on NCR paper so I can still deliver an on site report sans the finished summary which I have always delivered via email within the next 24 hours. Mine is a very thorough checklist with areas to be filled in if needed. I give the report to the customer in one of our own company report covers and send them and their agent the summary and pictures by email. Works great and I do not have to panic if some pieceof equipment “gives up” on me while I am inspecting.