So I bought my first laptop about six months ago and I thought I had made the transition from desktop to porto-PC with relative ease until today. 

Before I explain the problem I'd like to point out that I'm not really trying to talk about individual specifications for different types of laptop units as I think this problem is more of a universal thing that can happen to anyone regardless of who made it and what the specs are.  I'm more interested in learning about different fundamental problems that laptops have that usually aren't a problem with desktops.

For instance, today I was riding to the local print shop with a guy I'm working for to get some stuff printed that needs to be done ASAP.  We've actually been running a bit behind these last couple of days, so I had the laptop open and running on battery power while we were scooting down the road.  I first noticed something bad was happening when my desktop loaded and all of a sudden the entire thing lost power and blinked off.  I had it hooked up to the charger all day at my desk until this point, so I know there was no way in hell the battery was already dead. 

So I tapped the power button again and instead of giving me any sort of display to work with, the light on the power button started blinking rapidly.  I tried to do a hard reset by holding down the power button but that didn't seem to have any effect at all.  Instead of shutting down, the light stayed solid and WOULD NOT TURN OFF no matter what I did.  For all intents and purposes the computer was ON, as I could hear the fan running and at least one of the drives booting up, but I couldn't get a display on the screen no matter what I did. 

I called customer service and the bitch on the phone wanted me to ship it in and pay a ridiculous amount of money for them to replace the motherboard and video card.  I declined because there have been no indications up to this point that there is any sort of problem with either of those components.  Indeed, it was only until I was riding around in dude's car that it suddenly decided to fart up not do anything for me.

Instead we made a disappointing trek back to my house and I hooked it up to my television VGA inputs to see if I could get a display that way, but nothing happened.  I still couldn't get the goddamn thing to turn off and couldn't get a display.  I resolved to let it sit on my desk until the battery went completely dead, then hook it up to the charger and reboot that way.  However, instead of running out of juice within a couple of hours and shutting down like it normally does when I don't have it hooked up to a charger, it sat on my desk with its little blue light for OVER THREE HOURS.

I finally got pissed and took a knife to the back of it and snooped around, but again to no avail.  There was no dust built up anywhere and the fan was still running fine.  All of the connections looked good and there was nothing to indicate that anything had overheated or that any of the circuits were burnt. 

FINALLY, I ended up taking the battery out to get the fucking thing to shut off.  I threw the battery back in and started it up just fine, and now here I am.

So yeah, my best guess is that at some point during all of the jostling and unpacking and moving around that my laptop has underwent over the last couple of months may have jarred the battery a little loose and compromised a connection in the back somewhere.  My question is this:  is this something that happens frequently with laptops or am I not even close to a real diagnosis of the problem?  Also, for you laptop owners:  what other problems have you encountered with laptops that aren't really a consideration when working on a desktop?

thats never happened to me before ever

by why didnt you take the battery out at first instead of letting it die or "took a knife and snooped around" hmmm

I called customer service and the bitch on the phone wanted me to ship it in and pay a ridiculous amount of money for them to replace the motherboard and video card.  I declined because there have been no indications up to this point that there is any sort of problem with either of those components.  Indeed, it was only until I was riding around in dude's car that it suddenly decided to fart up not do anything for me.

Uh, not getting a display despite the rest of the computer appearing to function sounds like it could very possibly be a video card problem to me, why are you so angry at this woman on the phone for suggesting it?

I mean yeah they tend to rip you off with these repairs but it's a legitimate possibility!  Maybe it doesn't need to be REPLACED, but it could have been a video card problem.

This sounds like the unit may have gotten stuck/frozen/crashed in a sleep/hibernation mode.

I like my laptop alot.

I got it about 2 years ago and its an ASUS (I forgot the rest of the specs and took the sticker off) and its done pretty well since I got it.

The only real problem I get with it is overheating when I'm in bed using it and something blocks the fan. Or through dust getting in the fans. Which I did have to take it apart and clean it out because the venting system on my last ship was so bad the air was thick with dust and other shit. Breathing alone was almost like smoking except without any of the pleasure you might get out of that. By the time I got off and had the time to clean it, it looked terrible. Amazingly it never had a problem with it other than the overheating.

Uh, not getting a display despite the rest of the computer appearing to function sounds like it could very possibly be a video card problem to me, why are you so angry at this woman on the phone for suggesting it?

I mean yeah they tend to rip you off with these repairs but it's a legitimate possibility!  Maybe it doesn't need to be REPLACED, but it could have been a video card problem.

I was just generally angry because for the last three weeks I've been working on a very important project with a short deadline that needed to be finished ASAP and she was completely unwilling to walk me through any general troubleshooting over the phone.  As dumb as I may sound for not knowing how to take the battery out of my laptop, at the moment I was generally at a loss and there was no way in hell I could have shipped my laptop away for five weeks while they farted around replacing components that might not even have a problem and charging rates that I can't afford at the moment. 

I also was under the impression that this thing had a four year warranty from the manufacturer when I bought it from my uncle.  Turns out the warranty is actually with the store that sold it.  I didn't know this at the time and she was telling me over the phone that my warranty had expired THREE DAYS AGO when the laptop isn't even a year old! 

I mean yeah, I'm legitimately concerned now that my the days of my video card may be numbered and I'm probably going to see if BestBuy can't go ahead and throw a new one in for me at some point.