In the not too distant past I had a compaq laptop. It was secondhand when I got it and carting it backwards and forwards to work certainly put it through its paces. Finally it was consigned to retirement and a new laptop was bought, a laptop that didn't have a cracked case, dodgy usb ports and a hard drive that actually allowed an installation of xp with room left over. The compaq has been sat in the office waiting for a task. I tried to put linux on it but to no result (dodgy graphics card too and I suspect the harddrive is failing).

The laptop has now, however been given a new home. It's andrew's first pc and he loves it. It has dogz on it to keep him amused and his little usb car-mouse works a treat. That was until the other day when we decided to widen his choice of games with his cbeebies disk. Blue screen, no boot, kaput (thanks aunty beeb). We thought this the end of said laptop, the hard drive has finally given up, rip old friend.

Saw dad on Wednesday:

"Oh, btw, I fixed that laptop"
"Really? how"
"Well, I gave it some thought, and then it dawned on me, quite simple really"
"?"
"All I had to do was stand it on its side for a couple of days"
"??"
"You see, the problem was, some stuff was stuck in the RAM. So by standing it on its side, all of the little stuck bits could fall down to the bottom leaving room at the top for the programme we were trying to load. All working now"

(No, he wasn't being serious, but it made me smile )