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I was given a Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 today by my company. I noticed someone who had it was getting it replaced with a laptop. Being the greedy bastard that I am, I asked what was going to happen to it....
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IT told me it was trash, did not work well anymore, and there was no plans to redeploy.
Not that I think that IT has no clue, but they aften misdiagnose PC problems. So I found out what manager was the rightful owner and asked them if I could have it. Take it Please!
For those of you who don't know what a Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC is, it is a slate format tablet. Meaning the keyboard is not permanetly attached to the tablet. This makes it lighter to carry around.
Now it is not very powerful with only 1ghz transmeta Crusue chip, but only intend to use it for an ebook reader. You see have 100s of electronic books on computers and software. I also get many periodicals in electronic form as well.
I was carrying some of them around on a USB flash drive. But you can only carry so many and usually I never have the one I need.
Having an ebook reader allows me to have all my books at the ready and readable anywhere I go.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. When I got my hands on it, here is what I found out about it.
Out of warranty
The pen was cracked causing a bad power connection
The AC Connector inside the tablet was loose and would not charge the tablet
It would accept a charge while on the docking station
The battery capacity was only at 40%
I can fix this for little money compared to buying a used one off of Ebay for $1000. Here is what I did:
While the tablet is docked with the keyboard attached I was able to install MS Windows XP Tablet Edition. As that was installing I worked on the pen.
The shaft of the pen was cracked and was forcing the metal tube that made contact with the battery and circuit board to slide loose. Pushing it in was futile because it would just slide back out. So I tightly wrapped the shaft with Duct tape.
I now have a workable tablet PC for nothing. Granted the pen doesn't look very pretty and doesn't slide into slot that holds it, but it works.
I'll update with more on this as I make further repairs.
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