Dynabook TECRA A50-J annoyance

Today I was running my laptop on battery. Not intentionally. I had unplugged it to move earlier and had neglected to plug it back in when I returned.

I was concentrating on what I was doing, so didn't notice that the battery was running low. No audio alert because I had disabled all the system sounds.

So the battery ran down and the system fairly abruptly shut down. The system is set to shut down when battery falls to 10% of capacity.

I plugged it in within 10 seconds of it shutting down, waited a few seconds then pressed the power button.

The keyboard backlight lit for about a second, as it usually does when powering up. Then nothing.

I waited a few seconds then pressed the power button again, with the same result.

I kept waiting, then trying. Sometimes the keyboard backlight would come on briefly but sometimes not even that.

After a couple of minutes, the keyboard backlight came on briefly, then all went dark but then the screen backlight came on. But no Dynabook logo appeared. I thought it might be doing some sort of POST and waited. After somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds, it shut down again.

I kept waiting and trying, with the keyboard backlight coming on briefly but usually nothing more.

Finally, after about five minutes being plugged in, it finally booted normally.

The whole time it had full power: it was plugged in and powered up. Any reasonable laptop could have run without any battery at all.

But not the Dynabook TECRA A50-J. Evidently, it can't run without a battery, even when it has full power.

People have been making personal computers for almost 50 years now. Making laptops, or at least portable computers with batteries for almost as long. Dynabook wasn't a novice company when it designed and built its TECRA A50-J. But this behaviour, they thought, was acceptable.

I don't think I'll be buying another Dynabook computer. I had a Toshiba Satellite previously. Used it for many years. It was a tank, except for the too delicate case. After about a decade, I finally gave up on it because the last time the mounts for the screen had failed I had potted them up in epoxy and glued the case shut: too many of the clips and screw sockets had failed. When the mounts failed again, I couldn't open it to glue it back together without doing more damage. I also thought it would be nice to have something lighter, with longer battery life.

The Dynabook has been OK. The paint came off many of the keycaps within a few months. But the battery can't be replaced without opening it up and not being able to run without a battery is stupid.

I've only had it for about 3.5 years, but it's time to start looking for a new laptop, before they're all unavoidably infested with Microsoft AI.