What decision would you have made?
Last week one of my good clients called me to help her with what turned out to be a gummed-up laptop. Hey, what can I say? That's the best way I can describe it.
It was completely locked up and when I finally forced a hard reboot, it would alternate between working again and locking up about every 5 minutes.
I tried taking a few common steps I take in these situations to remedy the problem but the laptop just didn't want to play nice with me.
After about 30 minutes, I made the determination that there was a bigger issue involved with the laptop. Something that a computer repair expert would need to take a look at.
Options?
My client agreed to let me take the laptop to my favorite computer repair person for an estimate but before I did, she asked me if she would be better off getting a new laptop instead of trying to fix her existing one.
This is a dilemma many of my clients face and there never is a clear-cut answer. In this particular case I was looking at a 2-3 year old laptop running Windows Vista. The estimate from my computer repair person was somewhere between $45 - $125 (depending on what she found) not including any costs of parts that may need to be replaced if it turned out to be a hardware issue.
On the other hand, a brand new laptop in the same category as the one my client had would run about $560 and would have more memory, a bigger hard drive, a faster processor and Windows 7. And the existing laptop could be recycled for parts for approximately $50.
What would you do?
So I ask, what would you do in this situation? Pay the $45 - $125 and hope that it's nothing major that requires more spending? Or toss the old laptop out, recoup $50 from it and put it towards a brand new Windows 7 laptop for $560?
P.S. I'll tabulate the poll results after a few days and then reveal which decision my client made.
11 comments for this blog post so far...
February 25, 2010 at 8:12 am
Erik Deckers
Is there a way that your favorite repair person can check the laptop for the least expensive problems, i.e. the things that are worth fixing the laptop? Let’s say she checks for 5 possible problems, all of which will cost $50 to fix. But she doesn’t check 3 others, which would cost more than $150. If it’s one of the 5, she fixes it. If it’s not one of those, she can assume it would be one of the other 3, and therefore decides to buy a new computer?
February 25, 2010 at 8:41 am
Anne
It depends on the budget of the person needing the repair. Ultimately I would say to buy a new laptop, but if money is an issue and it’s an inexpensive repair then repairing should be the way to go.
I know technology advances faster than we can keep up with it, but we do have to think about our ROI on laptops these days. I’m using a 2 1/2 year old MacBook and paid $900 when it was new. I paid $500 for a Dell laptop a year ago for my daughter and the screen already blew. My ROI on the MacBook is already better than the cheaper Dell. Maybe a better laptop is in order.
February 25, 2010 at 9:32 am
Jean F
It depends on how attached your client is to the way her current machine is configured and how comfortable she is using it. A new machine, while potentially faster and more capable, will always operate differently, particularly with a different operating system. My preference is generally for sticking with the known if repair costs are reasonable. But then I’m a late adopter, so I may not be typical.
February 25, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Suz
If she took it to our favorite repair person, let me know! I’ll beg borrow & steal to get access to that computer - my motherboard is frying fast!
February 27, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Patric Welch
Erik - That would be a great service but something tells me it’s not cost effective for a business to do. Sometimes replacing a hard drive is easier than removing a virus.
February 27, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Patric Welch
Anne - you make a great point but one might argue that they’d rather have a new $500 laptop every 2 years vs. a $1000 laptop every 4 years. Of course, this assumes that the monitor on your Dell doesn’t go out for 2 years. In your case, 1 year is pretty rough and yes, I would rather have the better laptop.
February 27, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Patric Welch
Jean - Great point. Lucky for my clients, the majority of them only have a handful of documents and pictures on the computer so there isn’t much custom configuration. This sometimes makes the decision slightly easier.
February 27, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Patric Welch
Suz - You may want to call Regina (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
February 28, 2010 at 8:31 am
Barbara Puckett
I wish one could tell
1. when to stop trusting the repair person or their ability or,
2. the capability of the machine to be repaired.
In the case where expense is a factor in the decision, my daughter went the repair route and has put enough into repairing her desktop to buy a new laptop It still does not work. She takes it home and it quits again, the3rd or 4th time. The repair guy won’t make his work good. He just keeps charging her.
Where can you get $50 out of a used, failed computer?
March 01, 2010 at 10:18 am
Andy
I left the following over on the actual Poll Daddy poll, so here it is over here:
First, I would check what the term of the warranty is. I recently had a non-working screen on my laptop. After a call to Dell Support, it turned out I had the three-year warranty only because it was a free upgrade from the normal one-year. Plus it doesn’t hurt to call HP and just see what they can do.
If out of warranty, I would personally just buy a new laptop to replace a two year old one. If it was for a client, I would weigh their financial situation. If they were pretty broke, I would probably side with the repair option. If they could spare the $560, then I would suggest that.
Did you try booting with a Linux Mint Live CD? That could give a pretty good indication as to whether its a hardware problem. Plus, while there, you could go ahead and recover all their data if it is stable. If it is stable, then just install Mint or restore Vista.
March 01, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Patric Welch
Barbara - you may not be able to get $50 cash for that computer but Geek in Pink does have a recycling program and you may end up with a gift certificate that can be used for future services. Still better than throwing the computer in the trash.
Geek in Pink can be found at http://www.geekinpink.com
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