I finally decided that I can’t stand the bouncy keyboard on my Dell Inspiron laptop 8500. Especially after the unit has been on a while, the keyboard will jump all over the place. After going through diagnostics from the Dell web site, and finding out that the laptop was a year out of warranty, I called the tech support people, and they gave me two choices: 1. Send the unit back to Dell, for repair of the keyboard, for $199.00 or 2. order a keyboard from the spare parts department for $19.95. I went with #2. We’ll see how it goes when the keyboard arrives.

The machine is two years old. Just about the “average” life of a laptop.