I haven't had much experience soldering surface-mount components. You
need a soldering iron with a fine pointed tip, not big and stubby, and
having some small-diameter solder also helps. If you've got an old junk
network card or hard drive or something kicking around, you might
practice unsoldering and resoldering components on that before attacking
the laptop. http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_ts...tml#TSHOOT_029
has good information on soldering and desoldering.



Actually I find a big stubby tip works well since I can load it up with
solder. The trick is to tack solder a pin in one corner, or glue the
chip down, then apply a little pool of liquid rosin flux over the pins
and drag a blob of hot solder on the tip of the iron across the leads
slowly, the effect will be much like the original wave soldering, might
want to practice on some junk first though. If you make a solder bridge,
some desoldering wick can clean it up, apply more flux and try again.
When finished, wash off all the flux.