Changing a Timex Battery for Dummies

Timex digital watch

Back in olden days, people wore wrist watches instead of pulled out their smartphones whenever they wanted to know the current time. Some people still like to wear horribly expensive (and huge) watches for show, though, and there are still plenty of wrists in use for timing and stopwatches. They're inexpensive enough that they're almost disposable, but replacing a dead battery is still a good bargain; especially if you can figure out how to do it yourself. If, however, you want to replace the battery in a Timex watch, you can't use the instructions Lisa Miller posted at eHow.com (it's now at Leaf.tv) in "How to Change Timex Batteries," mainly 'cause they won't work.

We say that because the Antisocial Network's friend Mr. Fixit has actually performed that little task, and Lisa's instructions are missing a critical step. Twice. Of course, given that Lisa is a typical eHow dummy, the instructions aren't all that good to start with, full of misstatements like

"Unscrew the back of the Timex watch in a counterclockwise motion using small jeweler's-sized screwdrivers..."

We always love the morons who think they have to tell us which direction to screw; but the stupidest thing Miller says here is to "unscrew the back" - it's stupid because there actually are watch backs that unscrew, though you can't use a jeweler's screwdriver to remove them. Apparently Lisa got confused when performing her cut-reword-paste job. That misstatement, though, is nothing compared to the biggest problem Lisa's instructions have. She apparently didn't understand a critical step, so she just left it out. Here are her final instructions:

"7. Use your tweezers to put a new battery in the watch, making sure that it is facing the same way as the old battery. Screw the holder back into place or push the clip back over the top of the new battery. Turn the battery over to check that it is working. If not, double check that the battery is in the correct position. 8. Replace the gasket and the caseback. Screw the caseback tightly onto the Timex watch and reset the time as necessary" First of all, you can't "Screw the caseback" onto the watch, you have to install the screws to replace the back. Even if Lisa (and eHow's content editor) don't understand the difference, it's highly significant.

More importantly, if you were to follow Lisa's instructions, your watch wouldn't work, no matter which way you turned the battery. Battery-operated Timex watches must be cleared when a new battery is installed by creating an electrical short between the battery and the AC pad (where AC stands for "all clear"). Mr Fixit's instructions, on the other hand, contain this step; as do those of most people who aren't dumbasses like eHow's stable of freelancers. That includes Lisa Miller, the Antisocial Network's Dumbass of the Day.

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DDIY - ELECTRONICS