Disaster narrowly averted

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Our company recently instigated a ludicrous international help desk and did away with the local IT support organisation. Sadly this means that when you can't work out how to switch your computer on, you need to get a colleague to mail somebody in Brazil or somewhere equally inconvenient, lodge a 'ticket' and eventually they will ask the local IT guys to pop down and sort it out. It's an absolute joke. On Tuesday I reported the faulty 'down' arrow on my laptop keypad. Yesterday, with local IT still none the wiser, I took it up and shoved it under the nose of the new chap who hasn't yet learned the finer art of saying no. He squirted it with high pressure air, took off the key and wiped it with whatever is the IT equivalent of WD40. Still no joy. But maybe, just maybe, he had a solution - to switch the hard disc into another laptop of the same model that he'd found somewhere under a rock. Today - Thursday - I realised that IT man needed a nudge and asked again if he had a plan because I wouldn't be back in the office for a couple of weeks. He came down about 4.30, took it away and then came back 10 minutes later to say the other laptop had a broken screen. Theoretically he could call out and HP engineer to my home to fix it under warranty or he could attempt to canibalise the laptop with the broken screen and steal its keypad. Twenty minutes later all was done. We stuck it on the docking station and the down key did the downy stuff it's supposed to. I was happy. I then drove 150 miles home and it wouldn't switch on. In his rush to botch the keypad, friendly IT man hadn't put the back of the laptop back on correctly. As a result, the on button couldn't connect with whatever it is inside that makes it actually power up. Faced with a 300 mile round trip and me unable to do any work all day Friday, we hunted down a teeny tiny screwdriver, took off the panel and clipped it back into place. My husband was thrilled to bits that he'd managed to get it back on neatly and was nearly doing cartwheels round the room when it switched on. He will be insufferable for a few days and I'm so relieved I worked out what was wrong and he fixed it. Result!