the more i think about it, i have to point out that it seems like the laptop was already damaged before i opened it.

to begin with, it had been emitting a foul odor for quite a while. the smell was like burning dust, though, so it wasn't clear if it was blown or just dirty.

to be clear: the fan needed to be cleaned, i knew it needed to be cleaned a good while before i actually opened it and when i did open it up i took out a huge pile of dust that was clearly preventing it from spinning. in fact, i may have exacerbated the problem by running a lysol wipe over the vent, thereby dropping the dust off the vent and down into the fan. what i'm thinking is that i may have been too late: the clogged up fan may have already damaged something before i opened it up.

i was also dealing with some strange issues around the usb ports on that side, and what seemed like a possessed touchpad. i actually suspected that i might be dealing with some kind of cia keylogger that was trying to force me to use the touchpad to navigate. see, i use a usb mouse, because i'm old enough that i'm not touchpad-native. well, it's a term, now. it's not just that i'm old, it's that i spent a very large amount of time typing as a teenager and really held to it. at this point, i'll never get used to any kind of mobile device: i need a keyboard and i need a mouse. this is non-negotiable. i'll throw the thing through a window before i start using a touchpad...

if the cia were using some kind of windows backdoor, it would probably be written to utilize the touchpad driver, which is for both typing and pointing. so, my insistence on a usb mouse may have accidentally broken their surveillance software.

i fixed it by disabling the driver altogether. but, it's just as easy to conclude that the hardware was malfunctioning due to faulty wiring.

but, the usb port on that side also got sticky when it was hot. this was repeatably demonstrable, too: whenever it warmed up, i would need to push the usb connection upwards. that's an obvious electrical short.

the fact that the fan stopped may itself have been at least as much of an electrical problem as it was a dust problem.

so, it's hard to say how long it would have remained functional had i not opened it, or if it was even functional at all at that point in time. and, i'm not retreating from the claim that the design is horrific - nor am i the first to make the claim. but, on closer introspection, i think it's obvious that the thing was already in rough shape, and if it wasn't already broken, it probably could not have survived any disassembly at all.

i need to reiterate that i knew what i was doing and did not do anything that should have led to a short. it was either already broken, or impossibly fragile - or, potentially, both.