As my friend Andrew would say, with the weather lately, we all need a swim. Probably wasn’t the best idea for my Acer Aspire S3 however. Leaving your Ultrabook or laptop in a pool of water isn’t exactly a good start of your day, particularly when you’re off to work.
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So, what happened you may ask? I carry my Acer Aspire S3 and many other daily essentials in my Adidas bag, a semi-waterproof backpack which I’ve been using for everything and anything for almost 2 years. The bag itself was designed to carry a 2-3 litre hydro-pack, the ones cyclists and hikers use when they go about their activities. I on the other hand, use it for its convenience, a bottle that shrinks the more you drink! (Saves tons of space too).
Well, anyway, I left the cap unlocked (which shouldn’t leak, by the way) and stuffed it in my bag, rushing out the door into the car. The bag, being semi waterproof only started leaking from the bottom once there was a pool of water, effectively drowning my poor Acer S3. The minute I realised I had water in there, I panicked, took the ultrabook out and poured the pool of water out of my bag. So my Acer Aspire S3 was drowned and the first thing I did was checked if water leaked in. The keyboard was fine and everything was fine. I quickly wiped off what I could but to my dismay I turned it on by accident.
While I could simply blame the design of the S3 (that made turning it on so easy) and also the fact that I created the artificial swimming pool, the culprit of me not being to turn it back off was Windows 7 believe it or not. Of all things to break, it was Windows? Clearly Windows isn’t waterproof. (No pun intended). “Windows did not shut down correctly, Would you like to restore from a system restore point”. All this is happening while water is seen crawling into my screen. You can’t push water out once it’s turned on (too much science to explain there). So, I was sitting in my car, trying to turn my Ultrabook off and when it did, it wouldn’t turn back on. The design of the Acer S3 doesn’t allow you to remove the battery without the use of tools, which could have saved me some time and heartache of seeing water crawling on my screen. The battery reset requires a small object, like a pin or needle to be inserted to the back of the unit. I reset the battery and turned it back on and set Windows on restore startup and backed up my data.
Do’s and Don’t when your electronics takes a swim, ladies and gentlemen.
- DONT TURN IT ON, especially when you know it’s wet.
- DO dry the parts naturally, without any heating or artificial cooling. Wipe off any substance and let it dry in room temp. Doing it any other way may just fry the circuits.
- DO backup your stuff. If you’re lucky enough to have your device turned off while taking a dip, there is a higher chance that it would still work, so don’t panic…. yet.
How it fixed itself.
1. Turned it sideways to let the water drain out.
2. Kept it off the entire time.
3. Took 3 days to dry.
Moral of the story, if you’re going to carry a bag of water in a waterproof bag, make sure the exit is OUTSIDE the bag and not in it. Besides that, it’s probably a good idea not to carry water AND a laptop in the same bag. But, we are creatures of convenience and we do it anyway. This small little accident isn’t all that bad however, it is also a testament that Acer can build hardy equipment. Although it survived this swim, I highly doubt that you should try this at home (or anywhere else for that matter) and my Acer S3 will probably not take another dip anytime soon either.
