If it has a traditional rotary drive, you should still be able to hear 
or feel the disk spinning. Not long ago, I was caught in my office 
laying my head on my laptop trying to hear if the drive was spinning or 
not. If it's an SSD drive though, you may be out of luck. Using an OCR 
app to read the screen, as others have suggested, is a good idea. You 
could also use Skype or Facetime to show the screen to a sighted friend 
as well.

On 11/11/2015 11:56 PM, Ana G wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> How do you deal with a computer that's too quiet and too still?
>
> Computers have gotten progressively quieter over the years. In general,
> I very much like this trend. My current desktop and my recently departed
> netbook are both so quiet that I only hear them when the house is
> silent. In fact, if the usual household noise is going on, I often
> confirm the computer is running by touching some part of the body to
> feel the subtle vibration. this is helpful when the computer is taking
> longer than usual to power up or power down, when the shut-down is
> blocked by an app, or when the screen reader is acting up.
>
> My newest laptop, the HP I bought a week or so ago, is completely silent
> and completely still. there's no soft click on powering up, no barely
> perceptible blowing of the fan, no subtle vibration from whatever moving
> parts may be inside. the only sign of life I have, aside from the screen
> reader, is that the bottom warms up a little after some use. This
> doesn't help me troubleshoot or verify anything because it takes a while
> to warm up and another while to cool down.
>
> What do the rest of you do to check the system is alive when you're not
> sure?
>
> Ciao
>
>
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-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail


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