I officially hate fixing laptops...

[killergamer]

I hate it, I love working on desktops, so much easier so much more room...I've been working on a Gateway laptop that my friend busted the power jack by tripping on the charger cord. So thought it would be an easy fix...Heres a list of problems I've encountered with this stupid thing. First it takes me FOREVER to find all the screws I need to get to try to get the mother board out, ok well I find them all and guess what. The last fracking screw I need to take out gets stripped..for Christ sake. why does a new laptop have a stripped screw in it..Ok, so I get the new power plug put in by being careful and luckly the way the motherboard is set up the plug in on the motherboard is close to the edge. Well thats done..woot. Wait..dang it the piece wont fit in the case because all it does is sit in this stupid little holder made of two thin pieces of plastic and one of them has snapped off. Well wtf am I supposed to do now..so I get some electrical tape and hope that it stays in place (doing this for free) Well now I go find a bag of my screws that go into the motherboard and can't find it..turns out my girlfriend accidentally threw them out..now I have to try to find some on eBay..I guess I should say does any one on here wanna be cool enough and tell me what I should do? Or if any one has a bunch of little gateway screws they no longer need and is willing to help me out that would be wicked...Thanks for reading my super long rant..

[luciusad2004]

Laptops suck Whenever i take a laptop apart I always have extra screws when it goes back together. Suppose that's my own fault though. Not to mention that they all always have weird assembly methods, like parts that snap together and feel like they are going to break when you take them apart. With the trend towards smaller, sexier devices, I fear its only going to get worse.

[Outlaw]

That sucks man.

And unless you are building custom pc's or have a special need for a prebuilt desktop, they appear to be going the same route.

[luciusad2004]

Yeah, Soon enough it's going to be nothing but All in Ones and small form factors.
Not sure how I feel about it. On one hand an All in One DOES take up less room and look nicer, but forget about self maintenance and upgrades.

[Luke122]

I love working on laptops!

Lol.. I'm all bass-ackwards I guess. I like the challenge of the small components and tight clearances. Plus, now that I'm an Apple only household (You heard it here first), it's all laptop components in the iMac and Mini anyways.

There are a couple good tricks to remember.

1. Take a sheet of paper or piece of cardboard, and rough sketch the laptop on it. Then just punch the screws into the paper/cardboard in the approximate location of where it came from. Make a new sheet for each layer (ie: one for case, one for mobo, one for top tray, etc)

2. Take your time, take pictures if necessary. This is especially good to do if you are doing a teardown to repair/replace something. You might end up having to leave it for awhile, and if you dont remember how to put it back together.. *yikes*.

3. Most laptops use pretty standard screws; fine threads, phillips heads, and usually only 2 diff lengths. You can salvage from just about any laptop (except Macbooks, due to small torx heads, security torx, and tri-wing heads..grrr).

4. Broken power jacks arent that hard to fix, even if the retaining pieces are broken. Test to make sure it works (while still disassembled, and hot glue that sucker into place. Add reinforcements and extra glue as needed.

[luciusad2004]

Excellent tips luke. I've tried drawing out laptop diagrams for the screws but never thought to use multiple sheets of paper and to just push the screws in to the paper.

and Apple only? Even for the desktops? Gonna Mod them still? I'm thinking about getting a macbook to replace my laptop especially considering that I'm not to happy about windows 8, but I don't know if I could replace my desktop with an iMac. They are gorgeous though.

[Luke122]

I got my mac mini a few years ago in a trade, and it's been my media comp in the living room ever since.

Just picked up a free 20" imac in exchange for saving a laptop from recycling (broken external wifi switch, viruses, etc), and with about 4 hours of clean up, reinstall, and tuning, it's running great.

So great that when I got a decent offer to sell my gaming PC, I let her go with a smile, and embraced the darkside. I mean Apple. I mean.. I dont konw what I mean.

[TLHarrell]

If you can download a hardware reference (repair manual) for it, a laptop is actually fairly simple. Going it alone with no reference material and they can be the biggest hassle ever.

[Outlaw]

Laptops can be frustrating but because of that, some shops won't do internal repairs which is excellent for people like us. I just picked up some side jobs with a local repair shop. Yey!. lol

[Konrad]

When disassembling laptops or big screen TVs I video myself on webcam or phone, preening and mugging like an idiot while I try to make every part extraction obvious to the camera. I stick every little screw onto a nearby magnetic bar, left to right, I put all the non-metal thingies onto a big sheet of grid paper, trying to keep the same "facing" orientation and drawing only a stenciled outline plus a number. Reassembly is as easy as playing the video in reverse and copying myself. It works pretty well, I'm too lazy to take notes, the magnetized screws don't seem to hurt anything, and I never have extra pieces. Although breaking the paper-thin plastic bits does occur from time to time, no matter how patient, thoughtful, and hypercareful I try to be ... and the service manuals are always so useless they're beneath contempt.

Although laptop hardware repair is really just not worth the hassle anymore. Spend half a day replacing a fan or resoldering a busted cheap power connector or straightening out an indomitably stubborn keyswitch? And possibly breaking something else in the process? Sure the defective part itself only takes a couple minutes to repair, but getting it in and out of the unit takes forever and the growing complexity gradually gets a little distracting and worrisome. RMAs and repair shops aren't so costly.

I used to be fascinated by the sophistications of modern engineering and manufacturing. Now I'm only disgusted at how cheap and disposable things are, I know that no matter what I expect to find in my $1000 laptop I'll still be disappointed by what I actually find. Probably better to only stare at the pretty glossy exterior and not really think about what's inside. It makes me happy that I'm not especially interested in automotive stuff, and I suppose I can always find solace inside my solid-state analog oscilloscope.