Jim Elbrecht wrote:
AZ Nomad wrote:

-snip-
You would have learned the same lesson with a new computer. In fact,
you probably would have been at greater risk with all the components
being new as electronics tend to either be defective from the start or
last nearly forever.

I disagree here and that's what makes them a bad risk for refurbs.
Electronics failures are often the result of a specific temperature,
or a slight flexing of the part. If they don't hit that temp, or
get picked up just right in the shop, the refurb will be a failure.

My SONY tower that I referenced was fine until the room reached 74-
then it crashed. Open it up & it would cool off enough to work. A
new motherboard 7 cards cured it.

Daughter's Dell laptop was fine for a year- then began to have a
multitude of problems that were cured with a new motherboard from
Dell.

The HP I'm using was fine for 18months- then began to have weird
symptoms after it heated up a bit. Again, a warranty replacement of
the motherboard fixed it.

Electroniics fail in weird and wonderful ways.

Jim

That's why the very expensive aerospace/military electronics
gear is so costly. A lot of those systems are stress tested
or burn in before turning them over to the customer. When I
was rebuilding communications gear, my coworkers freaked out
when I would slam a piece of equipment down on the workbench.
I finally convinced them that it was going to get treated a
lot rougher in the field. I had a transistor act like an LC
network in a circuit one time, it was a very strange malfunction.
The transistor was fine with DC as a simple switch but as soon
as RF hit it it would transform into something evil. I've seen
all sorts of odd thermal intermittent failures in electronics
over the years and the one that had me pulling my hair out was
the Hall Effect sensor inside the distributor on my van's V8.
It would start and run when cold or hot but not when slightly
warm. I'm glad for the diagnostics in the engine computer.
Most of the malfunctions I come across these days are caused
by simple cold solder joints rather than component failure.
Unfortunately for the consumer, a lot of things are too costly
to repair because the time of a skilled technician costs more
than the item. So goes modern life.

TDD