Computers and Repairs

Why is it that nothing today is repairable?  Computers seem to be one of the most disposable items out there.  After both my sons’ computers became virused, we were told they were shot (bad mother boards) and they could sell us new computers for $500 (or more).  I had an older computer myself that ran beautifully; the only issue it had was the hard drive was too small and storage was very limited.  I took that to a different repair shop and asked if they could install a bigger hard drive that I had already purchased.  I was also told that computer was no good (it had bad capacitors – he showed them to me, and I’m still not sure he knew what he was talking about).  They could (of course!) sell me something bigger and better, though.  I ended up buying another used computer on my own with a bigger hard drive for much less money.  I will bet that first PC would still be running just fine.  It now occupies a shelf in our basement and sits unused.

A year and a half ago shortly after I started back to school, I bought a brand new netbook so that I would have flexibility in doing my schoolwork.  I could take it with me; I could move from room to room, etc.  The 17-month old netbook recently stopped responding.  Of course, it’s just past warranty.  We ended up doing a disk recovery on it and re-set it to the factory settings.  We then tried to run chkdsk on it and that process found bad clusters which usually means the hard drive is shot.  Now it won’t boot up at all.  The manufacturer’s customer service tells me for $100 plus shipping and plus taxes, they will “look” at it for me.  The netbook was a cheap one and only cost around $300 brand new so that’s not a cost-effective option.  I’m sure they’d be happy to sell me something bigger and better, though.

I am starting to think that I should have studied computer repair instead of web design.  It looks like upselling is a great way to make more money.  Better still I’d be able to keep all the older computers at home in working order. I’d repair ours instead of spending twice as much money on new ones.

SOURCE:  http://tech-aids.com/