Obtaining Replacement Parts for Your Laptop? 688
halosfan asks: "I recently broke the LCD bezel (the plastic thing that holds the LCD and related wires together) on a laptop that I bought half a year ago. I checked eBay as well as a few online stores specializing in laptop replacement parts, but still couldn't find the replacement. I contacted the manufacturer, but they were absolutely useless. Local laptop repair shop said they wouldn't replace the bezel without replacing the LCD, which isn't acceptable. It is an extremely frustrating situation, as the bezel is a minor part that I otherwise couldn't care less about, but it is necessary to carry the laptop around. I am wondering what other ways are there to obtain a laptop replacement part? Also, any recommendations for manufacturers that are good about making obscure replacement parts for their laptops available to the general public?" Does your laptop manufacturer make it easy or hard to get the necessary replacement parts?
Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:5, Insightful)
In their best interest (Score:2, Insightful)
Even batteries, that ought to be a commidity, are still expensive. $147 for a 760e ThinkPad battery? The laptop isn't worth that much.
How did it break? (Score:3, Insightful)
To likely mis-quote Aldous Huxley (Score:4, Insightful)
No good options on this (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, what you do, is you buy from Costco and return the machine every 5 months... that ruse was cooler a while ago when you could have it for a year and then return it...
My neighbour bought appleCare and boy did THAT pay for itself. His screen just up and DIED. First it turned weird colours and then it just died. Luckily he had appleCare, because at the time it was a $1200 repair!
So, extended warranties (the more extended the better) are WORTH every penny on laptops. You hope and pray you never need it, but when you do need it, and you don't have it, yer fucked big time.
good luck,
RS
Re:Do you know the way..... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the answer is JB-Weld (www.jbweld.net) or a similar epoxy. It's the modern nerd answer to tape on your glasses.
Re:Making do with what you have (Score:2, Insightful)
1. the hinges on the LCD
2. the sound IO-power board
both of these two operations could have set me back at least $1000 USD combined if I sent the machine into apple for repairs.
I went looking on ebay and around the net and fixed my laptop for $200 (in the form of parts and torx wrenches) for both repairs combined. Even then I paid too much--but those manuals are still a godsend.
Re:In their best interest (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yep, I got the warranty. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the two repairs to your laptop have been produced by dropping it, my humble submission would be that a padded bag would have been the best money you could spend.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:similar problem, dell helped (Score:3, Insightful)
But they also told me that the bezel of the monitor itself, because I also broke the clips that hold the thing shut, were unreplaceable. and to my eyes it does seem glued together.
I was also stunned a while ago when I had 2 of the same PDAs. 1 had bad memory so I got a new one from ebay. later my some broke the screen on that one so I thought I could combine the two. Nada. Its glued together. and so flimsy that opening the case just ripped it apart...
Thus I bought treo, i suppose i gave in.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:4, Insightful)
You have 100 people shell out 400$ for a warranty on a 1600$ laptop. 10 people may have to use the warranty so you make
100*2000 - 10*1600 = 184,000$ or 1840$ per laptop. If you sell the laptop at a profit for only 1600$ you definitely make more than you're share off the warranties.
So far I've had my laptop since October [ok so only three months] and it's been churning along fine. I can you one thing though, if my laptop dies before October 10th, 2006 I'll definitely be on them about the warranty.
Chances are my laptop will die October 12th, 2006 at which point I'll probably be able to afford a new laptop. So I'll donate my laptop to someone [who can then shell out less money to repair it then a new laptop costs] and go on my way.
The trick is to have a family lawyer available and treat your equipment properly [e.g. hard shell case, leave it off when not in use, don't turn the LCD up all the way, etc...]
Tom
Re:1982 Volvo GL to Mustang Conversion (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I have a personal theory that old station wagons appear to be moving 5-10 MPH slower than they actually are. This comes from years of driving one and having people pass me and then slow back down in front of me.
[Off topic] Your sig (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If its plastic, make your own. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you want to go replace a perfectly good CRT with a plasma? Don't they have severe problems after 4 or 5 years? One of my CRT televisions is over 15 years old and still looks great so I'm not sure what the value is in upgrading to some insane $5000 TV is.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:5, Insightful)
The other reply to this post sort of indirectly said this, but to put it more simply:-
In theory what you say is true, but relies on money having the same 'value' to everyone. Of course, if I'm penniless (and, say, need something to eat), $2 will be 'worth' more to me than it would be to a millionaire.
Would you risk everything you owned on a double-or-nothing bet; even if the odds were 60:40 in your favour? Probably not.
It has been shown (don't ask me for a reference for this) that the value of money is logarithmic compared to the amount you already have.
So a big insurance company can make a profit with little risk, even if the odds are only *slightly* skewed in their favour, and the small guy who doesn't have tons of cash in the bank will accept this (otherwise) unfair bet as protection against him being destroyed by a single disaster.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:3, Insightful)
You may be waiting many years then. You would be pretty unlucky to get less than ten years use out of a Sony Trinitron. They build those things pretty damn well.
Over Xmas I spent some time looking for a replacement for my parent's 14 year old Sony TV. The tube was fine but the tuner had some wierd fault (intermitent). In the end just got a new tuner box with the latest HDTV and the thing worked fine. This was in the UK and they have really good HDTV coverage now, 20 channels all for free, well the cost of the BBC license (#100 a year, $180 in US money at Bush era exchange rates)
We looked at new TVs but it was really clear that now is a lousy time to buy a TV. You either get a CRT TV which will be bulky and obsolete in 3 years or you plonk down $$$$ for plasma or LCD.
Wait two or three years and large flat panel displays will be as cheap as CRT is today or cheaper. They are pricey today only because of the volume thing and the kewlness premium. Intrinsic cost of manufacture and distribution of flat panel displays is much, much less than for CRT. They are much simpler designs.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:4, Insightful)
>> If you're the worrying kind, it's not a lot of money.
Actually, the problem is that extended warranties do cost a lot of money. They're mostly just cash cows for the manufacturers. Eg. for the cheapest $1000 iBook, AppleCare is $250 - that's 25% of the list price to extend the warranty from 1 to 3 years. By the end of the first year your $1000 laptop will only be worth around $500 anyway. So effectively you've spent $250 to insure something worth $500 at the time the insurance kicks in. And by the end of the third year the laptop will probably be worth less than $250.
Yes, if it breaks down in that time and you have the warranty, you'll be ahead. But think, how many consumer electronics are you going to buy over your lifetime? What proportion of those will break in the extended warranty period? Under 10%, I'd hope. But you're paying around 50% of the value of the item at the time the warranty kicks in. That's what I call a rip-off, not peace of mind.
Here's a suggestion. Every time you buy something new, instead of buying the extra warranty, put the same amount into savings. In a couple of years, you'll have saved enough to cover any repairs that might be needed. In 20 years you'll be able to retire.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a 27" XBR that was purchased in December 1985, with all kinds of inputs, including digital RGB, and its still just fine.
So, when I needed two new TVs this Xmas, guess what I bought? The 36" and 21" have joined their older sibling and all is well, and I know I'll never have to have them repaired.
As for plasma/LCD, why? Just because they are available doesn't mean that your CRT TVs are obsolete. I love to buy at the back side of the tech curve. Home computers are ~1Ghz, CRT monitors, 80G drives, 32x CD-ROM instead of 52x, etc. I've got 1 and 2 year old Palm/Handsprings and they work just fine.
I love to allow other people to pay the development and launch costs of new products.
Re:Everything is made cheap and unrepairable... (Score:3, Insightful)