Brian MacD wrote:
I have a Sony camcorder that is about 3 years old.

Batteries are shot...

Time for a new one!

The camcorder
hit some concrete quite heavily after I fell while still holding the
camcorder.

Poor thing!

A Sony Service Center gave me an estimate of
several hundred dollars to repair the camcorder, but said the
reliability of the repair work cannot be guaranteed. In normal
circumstances, Sony give a 3 months guarantee on their repair
work.

"Several" you say. Well "A couple" means two; so "several" means 3 or
more...

Spend $300 for repair work on Electronics in this day and age?

Replace it...

$400 will buy you a DV cabcorder with a Firewire interface, and probably
USB 2 too.

For another $100 the ability to use some sort of a memory card or stick
is added.

Almost any brand you want. Watch the sales, and close-outs and you're
likely to even find Sony in that price range.

It seems that, although Sony can repair the parts that have been
visibly damaged as a result of the accident, there may be
continuing problems from other components of the camcorder.

Like head alignment!

Can anyone please explain to me whether it would be sensible
to have the repairs carried out in these circumstances?

Not in my humble opinion.

Does
anyone know the types of ongoing problems that you might
have from a camcorder that has been dropped, even after
repairs have been made to the parts that were visibly damaged?

After all the cracked plastic is replaced, internally who knows?
Anything from cracked printed circuit boards, to bent metal brackets,
misalignment in the video heads and possibly in some switches, etc.

Who knows!?!!

The thing could decide to eject the tape for no reason, because it
thought you opened the door - due to a misaligned switch or sensor...

How to you demagnetize a thing? Smack it. Drop it. Whack it!

Are there many very small components of a camcorder that
could have been damaged even though this is not evident
from an initial examination of the damaged camcorder?

Plenty!

Thanks for your help.

Brian

Good luck.

Sincerely,

Jack