My Keyboard Replacement Is Here!

I think I’ve never woken up in my whole life as happy as I did last Thursday morning. My landlady knocked on my door, catching me in my not exactly polished morning look, to hand me a peculiar looking card of sorts. The flimsy, low-grade tarnishing paper that made up the local neighborhood’s parcel notice was hardly enticing to anyone’s sight at 7:40 am. The purple markings left by rubber stamps were almost purely rubbish, I meant gibberish.


But it was what I was waiting for my entire existence - okay, that was overboard and I shouldn’t exaggerate. But really it was. Since the spirit of stupidity possessed me last August 31st and I accidentally put down the blow dryer beside my then point-updating (and unsuspecting) HP Mini 1001TU, this particular parcel had always occupied my thoughts. I’d looked forward to the day when I’d be able to replace my warped keyboard. This last Thursday, after exactly one month - the anxiety of the long wait was finally over.

Since I’d already mucked with the software side and have already lost my receipt (so goodbye to my warranty) I thought it was ok to go ahead and muck with the hardware side of the HP Mini. Girls and screw drivers don’t generally mix so I downloaded the service manual for my Mini model from HP’s site for some guiding light.

After successfully taking out two screws from the underside - those you see when you take out the battery - I was smooth sailing until came the time to loosen the ZIF connector.

Ok, I know it meant “Zero Insertion Force” connector but for the life of me, I didn’t quite know how I was supposed to “lift it up”. Either the illustration in the pdf wasn’t exactly lucid or I was just dumb. Finally I figured it out; with my heartbeat on the verge of going wild in case I break yet another component while I was trying to fix one component, I gently pulled up the cream/white part and released the keyboard’s connector. Slapping in the new keyboard was easy as pie after the little puzzle exercise.

My impression was the Mini 1000 can really be considered a feat of engineering marvel - it was amazing how the depth of the keyboard itself plus that of the battery easily make up the entire lower chassis. It is that thin. The main board itself, it seems, is wound around the rectangle in the middle of the chassis which makes up the battery slot.


The touchpad and the top cover of the lower chassis (containing the palm rests) are actually one unit, so if I wanted to replace my touchpad, I’d have to order the entire assembly.


Too bad my girly side suddenly crept up behind and surprised me with a fear of cracking the top cover so I decided to stop half way through lifting it from the bottom part. I’d wanted to check the wiring of the touchpad at least in an attempt to resolve my intermittent touchpad problems - sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.


I’m thinking it’s got something to do with the very noticeable heating up of the area where the so-dimm is located that might be causing the problem or damage to the touchpad itself.