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philo

On 04/30/2017 01:14 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 30 Apr 2017 11:38:14 -0500, philo wrote:

I don't know if I've ever worked on computer I could not fix. One
of my most harrowing repairs was repairing the electronics on a
failed hard drive. I found a bad solder joint on a surface mount
capacitor. I then gave the owner of the machine a lecture on
backing up.

Not sure if I've run across one I couldn't fix either, but I've run
across quite a few I shouldn't have. I've spent more time on quite a
few than they were worth, so now I choose my battles. Back when a PC
cost $1200 and labour was $10 an hour it made sense to spend time on a
dead or flakey machine. When you can replace a PC with a good 2 or 3
year old off lease computer for $199 and labour is $35 and up an hour,
it just doesn't make sense any more in many cases.
At the factory where I spend 2 afternoons a week we have a stock of
off-lease Lenovos to replace dead factory floor machines (which were
off-lease Lenovos 7 years ago) Some were $99 and some were $199 -
depending where and when we bought them. Most of the ones from the era
of swelling caps have now died and been replaced. I re-capped a few
of the first ones to die, but now if it's more than a hard drive or a
power supply it's off to the recyclers - and if I don't have a good
salvaged power supply those with bad power supplies suffer the same
fate. Replacing the old ones upgrades from XP to Win7Pro at the same
time for no extra cost - - -

One thing I don't bother to do is re-cap.

First off I can get replacement mobos on eBay for next to nothing and
good caps are not cheap.

I did attempt it once and replaced all the ones that were visually bad,
bit the mobo still did not work due to others being bad as well. I
decided not to bother, it was a waste of time.