After 18 months of loving my Bold 9000, I have experienced the permanent trackball failure that renders it mostly unusable. I figured that, since I have repaired at least a dozen arcade trackballs, fixing the trackball in my BB shouldn't be too much of a leap. It's out of warranty and, really, how hard can it be ?
So, I took the plunge this morning and disassembled my beloved Bold. I had heard that Bold's are hard to take apart, but nothing could be further from the truth. OK, so I do have the advantage of owning two decent sets of screwdrivers and bits (including the required Torx T6) and have a "third hand" with a magnifying glass, but it was still very simple. Pop out six screws and then gently disengage the body and main board from the case. Releasing the retaining clip for the trackball was a bit of a pain, but the sharp edge of an exacto blade fit nicely and allowed my to get the trackball free.
I figured that, like an old ball mouse or arcade trackball, a build-up of gunk on one of the rollers was the culprit. Should be easy enough to clean it up.
And that is when it occured to me that my plan was doomed to failure. Unlike an arcade trackball, the housing for the BB trackball is damned small and I couldn't see a way to get it apart that would allow me to get it back together with any degree of certainty. I gave it a few blasts of compressed air, cleaned the contacts and tried to get the rollers moving. I then carefully fitted the pieces back together, replaced the battery and held my breath.
Good news -- I can now move side-to-side. Up, not so much. Down, not at all. OK, maybe that's not such good news.
Based on the way that the trackball housing fits on the main board, I think I can reverse it and regain down, while forgoing up. Down will give me the ability to at least read my messages and provide limited responses. Since I will be away from a computer for an extended time today, maybe that's a good idea -- if only so I can check the system monitoring updates that I get every few minutes. I haven't decided ... definitely feeling lazy today.
Since she's out of warranty, my options are to either have Rogers replace it, which carries the same price ($600) as getting a brand new Bold 9700 (not altogether unappealing since the 9700 has a trackpad and not a stupid trackball), driving downtown to the repair shop and paying them to replace the ball. Their site says $15 labour + parts, but i think that labour price applies to the Pearl and Curve, which are easier jobs. Then there's gas, parking and, more importantly, aggravation. of driving downtown during the holiday season. Oh, and there is the time away from work, which is busy and booming.
So, I did the only sensible thing and decided to order a replacement trackball and install it myself.
Going in, I did not recognize the peril of the path that I had chosen. Not the "life and limb" for my poor BB, but rather the interesting and seemingly unending array of bling available to trick my Bold out. After spending a couple of hours imagining various combinations of bezels, battery covers, faceplates, keyboards and trackballs (a totally black Bold seems like it would be totally amazing), I abandoned my quest to trick out my Bold and went back to "let's get the damned thing working again".
I ordered myself a pair of trackballs ... one red and one black, because I figured I should have a spare on hand and there is always room for a little bling ... and shelling out $27 for overnight delivery (more than the cost of the two trackballs combined, but not much more than gas, parking and labour if I chose to take it to the shop) so that I can be up and running again by Monday evening.
Now, back to my decision for the day ... should I be happy with up, or would I prefer to go down ?
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