Friday 16 December 2011

Repairing Laptops

"Have a look at this" my work colleague says. On a wooden pallet
 there would have been at least thirty laptops. The company had decided to throw them away. Christmas had come all at once, but alas it wasn't to be, not quite anyway, all the hard drives had been removed together with their saddles. Hmm. So I picked what I thought were the best and repaired those. The profit margins are small if any in this kind of activity, but for an enthusiast or someone who wants a working inexpensive laptop it is feasible. So how is it repaired?

Unlike PCs laptops have 2.5 inch drives with lots of different connections. The drives are more expensive per gigabyte than their 3.5inch counterparts and so care needs to be taken when buying a new drive. Research the subject. Use the model number of the computer and match this to available drives on eBay of other reputable sellers. Remember that the connections in laptops are varied and that it is most likely that one drive of a laptop will not fit another. Compounded by the fact that some require extra adapters to work.

So the drive is ready to be inserted. What holds it? A saddle or bracket is necessary. Easily available over the net or your local computer store. It is essential that it be held firmly or else there is the risk that the pins will break. It's possible to fix the drive firmly on some laptops with homemade articles and it should still work but it will not look very professional. It all depends on what the machine is meant for and how much your willing to spend to restore it.

Assuming the new drive complete with saddle is properly inserted the last remaining feature is the operating system. Since the laptops had their drives removed and most likely destroyed,  a new operating system is required. At this point questions might be asked as to whether it is worth doing from a financial point of view. An operating system like XP is an extra cost. Is it still worth while to repair? Yes it is. Use Ubuntu as an operating system. It is a free system available for download over the net. It has some drawbacks such as the playing of  DVDs because of legal restrictions but in many other ways it works perfectly. It plays YouTube videos, burns cds, and comes with games and office operating software. It is a great open system for those who wish to operate a machine for general browsing, basic games and office products.

There is one element of the Ubuntu system that is different from the windows system and that is the way that it is set up. Windows has the software as a complete unit when purchased while Linux Ubuntu requires a download for certain systems to operate. The typing in of code at the terminal could be a bit "off putting" for some that require downloads but that is reasonable considering the system is open source.

With discarded items there is always the possibility that there might something badly wrong with the machine. In the above case it was a company that simply decided to upgrade all machines whether working or not. Check the machine first before investing in hardware to repair. Use a boot disc to check the screen, RAM motherboard and battery. Only then decide whether its worth while to repair and use.

6 comments:

  1. It would be better if we choose a company that offers several types of services. The good thing with this is that we can choose the type of service appropriate to our Laptop needs. I just searched Long Island Laptop Screen Repair and a slew of companies came up.

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  2. Throwing is not a solution, it can be get repaired and if some are completely dead then some of its parts if still working then you can make use of it.

    ReplyDelete
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