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Gareth Magennis Gareth Magennis is offline
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Default the importance of truly clean contacts



"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
The following might be of interest. More likely it will provoke a "Duh. I
knew that." response.

Since last July, I've had occasional problems with my cell phone's
charger.
The plug sometimes refused to make stable contact. The other day it got so
bad I couldn't charge the phone.

I stopped by the nearest Sprint office, and was given the runaround by two
smiling b****es. They had no replacement chargers, nor could they order
one.
But they would be perfectly happy to sell me a new phone. I told them this
was unacceptable -- and illegal -- but they wouldn't budge. Oh, and they
didn't have the adapter that would allow them to download the phone's
contents to a new phone. "We don't stock that." Naturally.

The charger's plug was dirty and appeared slightly bent. One of the Bs
took
it to the tech, who cleaned it. The cleaning did no good. (I could see
only
a minor reduction in the crud.) I left the store contemplating various
forms
of legally permissible revenge. (I intend to visit the nearby police
station
and get their views on such things.)

I decided to give the plug a proper cleaning with DeOxit. It removed
almost
all the schmutz. I also put DeOxit on the cleaned plug and shoved it into
the jack for a while. (This helps remove junk you can't directly reach.)

Needless to say, the charger is now working much better. It's not perfect,
but it's reliable enough. (I've ordered a charger that connects to the
phone's 18-pin interface jack.)

The moral of this? I guess it's that because the bottle's label reads
"contact cleaner", doesn't mean it really cleans contacts.

--
"We already know the answers -- we just haven't asked the right
questions." -- Edwin Land





Er, does all this not actually point to the phone being the problem rather
than the charger?


Gareth.