Boy wrecks £22k worth of MacBooks by weeing on them
An 11-year-old boy has been charged with vandalism after relieving himself on a cartful of Apple MacBooks at school, causing $36,000 (£22,170) worth of damage. The computers, the property of Upper Allen Elementary School in Pennsylvania, were destroyed beyond repair, local publication PennLive reports. Manneken pis wears …
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Cymbals go "badum"?
I think there's a couple of drum hits in there too.
Re: kiddo might have been a Reg reader...
It's also known as a rimshot and this very handy site will perhaps give you an "Ahh!" moment.
http://instantrimshot.com/
Re: kiddo might have been a Reg reader...
so, so, so, so, soooooooooooo NOT going to a site called that from a work machine!
A whole new meaning to "Piss on it"...
While I can understand everyone pissing on a Mac, I expect the yoof just needed to unload and wasn't brand conscious of the Macs.
Drying out does not always work...
My wife spilled hot tea onto my Macbook a couple of years ago and it instantly died. I tried for several days to carefully dry it out but it would not boot. I did eventually revive it but it required a a strip down and clean (it was dry inside by this point). It also needed a new battery and wifi card.
Hahaha!
They must be soooo pissed on off.
Well someone had to.
Coat got.
That photo is so racist! Insinuating black children are more likely to wee on iProducts that white kids!
£22 K?
Thats a lot of wee....
Was it real life recreation of Austin Powers 3 sketch?
As previously asked...just how much wee does the average 11 year old's bladder hold? Sounds like this could be a new form of reg measurement...
Re: £22 K?
Having early this morning had the opportunity to observe at first hand exactly how much wee a 7 week old kitten can contain, I have every confidence that an 11 year old child could quite easily contain enough to destroy an entire container load of laptops if he so desired.
Re: £22 K?
I can tell you from my personal experience in raising a now-three-year-old boy that even a toddler can emit enough urine to saturate ENIAC top to bottom.
It's quite remarkable, really.
I had a post-pub toilet malfunction that resulted in a pissy laptop.
It never worked again. It probably would have if it wasn't on and with a psu connected at the time.
Re: I had a post-pub toilet malfunction that resulted in a pissy laptop.
Does your floppy still work?
Re: I had a post-pub toilet malfunction that resulted in a pissy laptop.
pffffttt
Sir, you owe me a keyboard; cup of strong continental roast coffee and/or dishwasher tablets (but then I'll have to take keyboard home..)
More to the point, what the hell elementary school has random carts full of $40k of macbooks just lying around? Back in my day (ahem) we were lucky to have a room's worth of Apple IIs, and we liked... well, no, we didn't, but that's beside the point.
Come again?
makes a change from the usual liquid fanbois squirt over new Macs I suppose...
Beyond repair?
I'll offer them £50 for the lot.
I'll bet I can repair some...
Vic.
Of course they were a write-off
Under current health and safety laws no half way sane headteacher could ever authorise the use of a laptop (whatever the make) that has, or has potentially, been peed on. Just imagine headlines like 'teaching assistant forced to use contaminated hardware now psychologically unable to work with IT equipment and demands $3.8 million in damages' or 'I wasn't told that my children were touching [insert racial derogative of choice]-urine in this school, mum complains, sues council/ town/ board of education'.
The write-off is perfectly understandable, the insurance will pay; and with a bit of luck (and some IPA flushing) you can get a cheap, usable MacBook off ebay.
Eh?
PennLive says "damaged beyond repair"; isn't "destroyed beyond repair" redundant?
how could this have been missed?
That's taking the piss...
Baadum tish
My sister-in-laws Acer laptop survived a Jack Russell relieving itself on it, we'll she said it was the dog but knowing her kids I would not be shocked if it was the youngest one of them. The local computer shop charged her £50 to clean it. There was no way I was doing it.
Was there a warning message?
It being the US, they can hardly complain about the kid's actions unless there was a large warning message saying "Do not urinate on this computer"
Jack Russells
My mother's thinkpad survived similar treatment from her Briard.
Dismantle, drop in bucket of water, etc.
The keyboard actually worked better afterwards.
IBM AT Keyboard
Wasn't it the original IBM AT keyboard that would happily go through the dishwasher if you accidentally "soiled" it.
Some advice
If you ever put a keyboard into a dishwasher, make sure that:
- You use a 'cold' program. Most keyboards today have some kind of 'membrane' made of silicon or plastic that could be damaged by hot water.
- You don't use dishwasher's 'salts', as they could corrode the metallic parts -springs, ...- of the keyboard.
- Make sure to let it dry completely before using it. It'll dry faster if you disassemble it first.
I learned this the hard way. :-(
Oh dear
Apple quality must've taken a turn for the worse since a friend fell in the (saltwater) harbour in Amsterdam while carrying his macbook, and got it back to working after carefully drying it out.
Re 'cart' I suspect this might be one of those custom-made 'charging carts' designed for educational establishments. That would mean that every single Mac was powered in some way, creating some problems.
In tema of 'trauma', anybody working in a school and claiming to be traumatised by child urine seriously needs firing for the good of humanity.
Aliens
The USA truly is a melting pot, taking in and welcoming all creeds and races. I would have never guessed that in PA of all places there would be an integrated colony of xenomorphs (Aliens from Alien franchise). How else can you explain piss that can destroy 30 laptops? I think they would have mentioned that it shorted out the batteries, causing them to catch fire, the fire then spreading to and burning through the entire stack... but that sort of detail would have made it into the news report.
So what you do is take them apart, carefully rinse them and put them back together (after you let them air dry).
Schools tend to buy a power cart that can hold and charge 20 or so laptops at a time, I suspect the units were in one of these.
What's wrong?
The boys was only weeing where someone had left a pile of shit anyway.
Dissapointed
I am dissapointed that there have been no Withnail and I references made to date.
Were they on fire?
Not that most of us would piss on them if they were...
Liability issue
It isn't just about the warranty or whether the devices physically work any more - it is a liability issue.
You 'clean' the laptops and put them back in use, and then a child gets a shock from one for some random reason. The school would not be able to show due diligence with the devices, and as such would be very open to a civil case against them.
Not to mention not many kids would want to work with laptops that were known to have been peed on.
Negligence
You can't place all the blame on the kid, why did the school leave 20k worth of laptops lying around ?
Not locking stuff up creates theives.
They should have at least been in a secure storage / charging area. I am just shocked that they did not get stolen.
My Macbook accidentally came into contact with a small amount of water. After drying out it appeared to work OK when plugged into the mains except for the charging indicator. The Mac repair shop said that the motherboard showed signs of corrosion and needed to be replaced (at enormous cost). This was confirmed by the insurance company who said that it was not worth repairing. It was a basic model about 6 years old and the replacement value was deemed to be £999 (cost of a similar model at Currys). I was shocked and the insurers said that unlike most consumer electronics, Apple products do not fall in price; they improve in specification. Two things I have learned:a) Macbooks are very susceptible to liquid damage b) if you are going to go Mac then you need good insurance.
I have an exception in my insurance where Apple laptops have a £250 excess compared to £50 and Iphones have a £50 excess instead of £10.
I hate to say it but Apple products have incredible residual value. What phone can you buy for £500 and sell it 2 years later for £250.
Aw, give the brat a break. He was only expressing himself and his opinion of Apple...
Ahem.
I'll get me coat ;-)
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