Yesterday afternoon I came back home, sat at my desk and like always pressed the power button to turn on my laptop, but this time instead of a black screen and starting windows text, my laptop emitted two short beeps and the following message was displayed "non system disk or disk error". I am not ashamed to admit that I spent the next few minutes panicking. I just sat and stared blankly at the error message; all I could think of was everything that was not backed up: my work, my music, my books and my videos. After I calmed down a bit I did what one should always do in this situation; I restarted my machine and crossed my fingers. Sadly my hopes were dashed and the error message appeared once again. Next I restarted my machine and went into the BIOS to run a hard drive test. Unfortunately my laptop, a HP 2230s requires a BIOS password and I just couldn't remember it. I tried unsuccessfully for the next 30 minutes to remember the password. It was now around 2 pm and I realized that my only option was to go to a professional.
I went to my local tech store, Smart Cents Limited at Adams Arcade, my usual source for blank DVDs among other computing goods. The staff there confirmed my suspicions, that my hard drive was toast. It was not the first time I had encountered issues with my laptop; my battery had actually stopped functioning around 1 month ago but I thought a replacement battery would be too expensive and as long as the laptop still worked, it was only a minor inconvenience. To my surprise the staff at Smart Cents informed me that a new battery would only cost Kshs. 5,300 and a new hard drive Kshs. 6,400. Before hearing this I was actually contemplating purchasing a new laptop, preferably a basic, low priced one for the short term. They didn't have any basic laptops in the store at the time but the staff told me they could order one for Kshs. 35,000 to arrive by Monday. This was a bit out of my price range so I decided to look around and see if I could find a cheaper laptop to purchase. I visited BJ's Store; it has been branded "East Africa's First Electronic Superstore" on the upper floors of Adams Arcade to see if I could find a cheaper alternative. Alas, the cheapest laptop I could find was a Lenovo for Kshs. 38,000. I now began to seriously consider replacing the battery and hard drive instead of spending more money on a new laptop.
Whenever I need to make a serious computing purchase I always go to Starcom System Solutions Ltd. on the 1st floor of Norwich Union House in the CBD. In my opinion they are the cheapest and most reliable computing parts supplier in Kenya. This time they really lived up to my expectations, they sold me a battery at Kshs. 4,500 and a Toshiba hard drive at Kshs. 5,500. To my delight I managed to replace my faulty 6 cell battery with a 9 cell one at no extra cost. This meant that my laptop's previous battery life would be extended by a few more hours. The staff at Starcom provided warranties for both products and free installation of the hard drive.
Anyone who has had to reformat or replace their hard drive knows that the most tedious part of my ordeal was about to begin. When I got home the first thing I did was to install my operating system which was Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. For the rest of the day and night I was occupied with updating Windows, installing drivers and installing software. As of the time of writing this post I have just finished installing Office 2010 and Skype. Windows is still updating. I have yet to reacquire all the data I lost but that is a problem for the future.
Availability of technology in Kenya has really come a long way. A few years ago replacing my laptop battery would have been amazingly complicated not to mention costly and the price of a laptop hard drive would have been ridiculously expensive. I actually saw a basic laptop at Starcom for Kshs. 22,500 a price that would have been simply unimaginable a few years ago. We still have a long way to go especially when it comes to the price of original software and games. However, this experience has left me with the hope that Kenya is on the path to making computing technology more affordable for all.
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