Who can fix a broken laptop? (hardware)

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weblordpepe

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# 18728 21-Jan-2008 19:26

Hi guys. My laptop died, and I don't know where I can take it to fix it.

The warrenty will be way out by now. It's a Dell Inspiron 8600.

The problem is something to do with hardware and power. Power button does nothing. The LEDs don't light up. I've checked and yes the LEDs and buttons are plugged in to the mobo and stuff.

But there is no juice going into it. Battery is full 100%, and plugging into AC only makes a slight buzzing noise.

Bottom line though is - can I take this thing to a PC shop? If so where is the best place to go in chch? I am rather noob at broken laptops.

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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# 105997 21-Jan-2008 19:43

Do you have insurance at all? If you do I'd probably look at that first and see what your excess is and if your laptop is covered by it. The laptop itself may well be either unserviceable or the cost of reparing it would far exceed what it is worth.

freitasm

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# 106002 21-Jan-2008 20:32

weblordpepe: Hi guys. My laptop died, and I don't know where I can take it to fix it.

Let me check my crystal ball... Nope, I don't know where you are so it's hard to help you finding a place to have it fix - help us help you, by giving at least some basic information. If we know you are in Wellington I can recommend APT, but really we need to know more.

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manhinli

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# 106003 21-Jan-2008 20:34

He said that he was in Christchurch.

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freitasm

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# 106009 21-Jan-2008 20:51

Argh.... Sorry, read too fast and skipped the last line.

Now I owe you a beer.

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weblordpepe

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# 106012 21-Jan-2008 21:02

Heh heh

Yay beer points. Actually no I don't have insurance against this. Luckily my files/main system is the desktop & my laptop only remoted in. So there's no hurry to get files off it.

What bothers me is that I just bought a new battery ($~140) for it. Now its borked.

Whatever is wrong with it is clearly on the electronics level. It may be a broken contact somewhere or it could be fried capacitors.
It was working at home one day. I shut it off, put it in my back pack, went to work & didn't even take it out of the backpack. Got home and thats when I discovered its corpse.

Couldn't have been overheated because the battery was 100%. I assume.

manhinli

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# 106013 21-Jan-2008 21:06

You might be better off just selling the good remaining parts (like the battery) and getting a new one. Repairs are not always that helpful and can become costly, as sbiddle said.

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weblordpepe

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# 106045 22-Jan-2008 00:27

But I wuv my laptop :(

Panq

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# 106073 22-Jan-2008 10:10

Unless it's a rather new laptop, it would probably be cheaper to buy a replacement (identical model, if you really are attached) than to get repairs. My laptop goes for around $500-$750 on TradeMe, and when I sent it in for repairs, they tried to charge around $1000-$1200 for a new motherboard. So not only is the second-hand motherboard cheaper, it comes with a free hard drive, RAM, screen, keyboard... :)