I woke up recently to find the control key on my work machine broken. I couldn’t have been so tired the night before that I would fail to notice a missing control key; the only explanation I can come up with is that the cat must have hooked a claw on in while wandering around in the middle of the night.
Ian ordered me a new keyboard and mailed it here – they’re surprisingly cheap.
I always hate when the first step involves prying something open. In this case we need to take off the hinge cover, over the keyboard. You took the battery out first, right? Open the screen all the way. There’s a little slot to insert a flat-blade screwdriver. A little gentle pressure and twisting the screwdriver back and forth, and the edge of the cover pops up. A very easy prying operation – you won’t even put a nick in the plastic.
There are a couple more clips along the bottom of the hinge cover. Gently pull it up from right to left; again, not a dangerous operation, the clips pop off pretty easily.
Remove the three screws at the top of the keyboard with a small phillips screwdriver.
The aluminum keyboard tray has little protrusions on the edges that hook under the plastic top of the laptop. We want to pull the keyboard up to release the tabs at the bottom, but first the sides need to be freed. A little gentle prying with the screwdriver does the trick, and we’re throwing this one away (or keeping it for the spare keys,) so no big deal if we tweak it a bit.
Fold the keyboard down towards the front of the computer – there’s just one plug that attaches it.
Pull up on the blue tab to disconnect the keyboard.
Assembly is the reverse, of course. The only tricky part is getting the rather flimsy keyboard back in without bending it. I used the screwdriver to push the edges down, where it clips under the cover on the sides.
It was interesting to see the design of the keyboard – it’s completely sealed with plastic on the bottom, and the edges are turned up, like a tray. So next time you dump a Corona over into your laptop keyboard, don’t freak out! It’s not going anywhere :-)