Everything's going pear-shaped!

Before coming to Thailand, some people told me that things (clothes, electronics, minds) would not survive the conditions well here, compared to Australia. Well, that is starting to show, especially for electronics. Since arriving, some of the things that have failed:

Video Camera. Within the first month of being here, my Canon MV730i digital video camera stopped working. Since I haven't had much use for it (instead preferring the still camera), it has sat in the bottom of my cupboard gathering dust. I have a strong belief that, in the same way in stopped working for no apparent reason, it will magically fix itself one day if I leave it alone.

Digital Camera. In August 2007 towards the end of Mum and Dads visit, my Canon IXUS 50 digital still camera shat itself. More specifically, the automatic lens would not extend/retract correctly. Well, this was very upsetting, being about 2 years old and in general quite a useful camera (although the quality of pictures, especially without good lighting, is not so good). So I went to the Canon support centre at Zeer Rangsit and sent it off to see if they can fix it. In the meantime I searched on the web and found that the problem was most likely the dreaded E18 error. Canon didn't tell me the exact problem, but highly likely it was E18. The quote to fix it was 4000 Baht. A new, current model camera is about double that price, so now I have a second paperweight sitting in my cupboard waiting for the fix itself fairies to arrive while I sleep. Update (Nov 2007): I decided to fix it (yes, for 4000 Baht) instead of getting a new camera. Its working again.

Video Card. Around July 2007 I started having trouble with my computer crashing at random intervals. Not just the normal crashes expected of running Microsoft Windows, but special crashes. My diagnosis (that is, gut feeling) was the PC was overheating. After monitoring most devices, checking connections and even taking the PC to Zeer for testing for a day, I narrowed the problem down to the video card. I had a Asus GeForce 6200 TC that was getting very hot. One of the guys at Zeer added a fan to the video card, and for a while things were working well. Of course, I was running the PC with no sides on the case and my room fan pointing towards it. Not the best of setups, but worked ok. Then one night in early October my computer would start but nothing was displayed on the monitor. After trying a few different things I made the decision to get a new video card. Now choosing a video card is not fun: there are 10's of different models from 5 to 10 different vendors. In the end I went for another Asus: GeForce EN8500GT with 256Mb RAM. After days browsing online, and 4 hours walking around Zeer, why did I choose this of the 40 or so possible options? Because the sales girl was cutest of them all. So far, its working well, although I'm not game to put the sides back on my case yet.

So my old video card joins a faulty Ethernet network card and dodgy ADSL modem in another cupboard. But I'm no fool - I'm not expecting these three to fix themselves (hence the separate cupboard).

Luckily most of my clothes are surviving so far ... apart from iron burns from the laundry.

Created on Sun, 21 Oct 2007, 5:44pm

Last changed on Sat, 16 Feb 2008, 11:11pm