Chiff and Fipple Forums

It's one year old, and 28 days past the expiration of its warranty. Toshiba Satellite something something model Cr@P-Y-didn-1-6ET-A-mac.

Belongs to the kid for whom it survived a year of college with me only needing to restore it to a restore point once over Christmas break. Otherwise, it functioned, except for when it didn't. Dang thing got decent reviews on Amazon, but its problems—high-pitched squealing, not being restorable via carefully prepared restore disks, etc, seem rampant once one Googles.

I don't have any clue how much it would cost to fix a trashed PC laptop, but I know that I myself and anyone with a genetically similar energy field are, apparently, poison to Windows machines, based on my Mac to PC trasholation ratio. (Since 1988, probably 10 mac machines have served 4-5 year successful terms each, whereas 4 PCs that we've dealt with have died young after headaches and hassles. One Toshiba mini is hanging in there. I think that's because we rarely touch it. It probably takes a certain amount of powered-up exposure to our gene pool before it loses its mind.)

Ok, I know some people don't understand Mac-preference and will defend PCs to the death, but they probably don't exude Windows anti-matter through their exocrine glands.

It just costs so frackin' much to replace it with even the most basic of macs, not that they make those. But I don't want to spend more than $100 on fixing something which, statistically speaking, is more apt to crash and burn than not.

emmline wrote:high-pitched squealing, not being restorable via carefully prepared restore disks, etc

Those symptoms just sound like a bad HD, Emm, no? I wouldn't think a new replacement drive would be all that expensive, even out of warranty, and you could probably just swap it in yourself, for significantly less cost than a whole new machine.

That happened on my Thinkpad, fortunately while still in warranty. They sent me a replacement drive which was twice the original size, and it took 5 minutes to do the swap.

I concur, probably the hard drive. If you don't want to fix it, donate it to me - my nephew is in a work program learning computer repair. He's already brighter than the original designers - he can put them back together with fewer screws. They could have saved some bucks.

and weight!

I just wrangled an offer I can't refuse. One of my old HS buddies works in the DC area. He is a NASA engineer and happens to have a supply of hard drives, one of which matches this computer. I think I'm going to buy him lunch next week. If this works the repair will cost one lunch.

emmline wrote:I just wrangled an offer I can't refuse. One of my old HS buddies works in the DC area. He is a NASA engineer and happens to have a supply of hard drives, one of which matches this computer. I think I'm going to buy him lunch next week. If this works the repair will cost one lunch.

Women have their ways, which none can stay.

I second (or is it fourth or fifth?) the hard drive fix. Shouldn't be a difficult swap out.

Redwolf

emmline wrote:I just wrangled an offer I can't refuse. One of my old HS buddies works in the DC area. He is a NASA engineer and happens to have a supply of hard drives, one of which matches this computer. I think I'm going to buy him lunch next week. If this works the repair will cost one lunch.

Oops. Yer Caledonian is showin'.

Nanohedron wrote:

emmline wrote:I just wrangled an offer I can't refuse. One of my old HS buddies works in the DC area. He is a NASA engineer and happens to have a supply of hard drives, one of which matches this computer. I think I'm going to buy him lunch next week. If this works the repair will cost one lunch.

Oops. Yer Caledonian is showin'.

It's a strong and unavoidable influence in my family line.

A one year old laptop is worth repairing. If it is the HD, you can probably even do it yourself. On most laptops, the hard drive is one of parts you can access through one of the hatches on the back (RAM is another). You'll need a tiny screwdriver, usually a phillips (+).
First, go online and google 'hard drive' with the make and model number of that computer. Find a site that'll sell you one as a replacement part. Buy it.

Then turn the laptop over and unscrew one hatch. Works somewhere where any dropped screws will be easily caught and found; not pone where screws can roll themselves under the furniture. Once the cover's off, look for a block about the size of a 1/4 inch thick credit card. If you don't see it, put the cover and screws back and open the other hatch. When you find it, gently detach it from it's ribbon/cable and swap it for the new one, then batten down the hatches again. You're done. You will need to reload the O/S and your software, tho.

Just don't throw away the little frame the hard drive is sitting in. Take the bad one out of that and put the new one in it, THEN put the new drive in the computer. Don't do what I did the first time and put the drive in without that frame. I noticed it before closing things up though.

Charlene wrote:Just don't throw away the little frame the hard drive is sitting in. Take the bad one out of that and put the new one in it, THEN put the new drive in the computer. Don't do what I did the first time and put the drive in without that frame. I noticed it before closing things up though.

Good point. If the case is metal, it's probably there to shield the drive from the rest of the guts. If it's plastic it's likely just an anchor. You can do without the latter but you need the former.

Thanks all. My friend did switch the hard drive today, and I think that functions in the sense that it is probably doing what it is supposed to be doing. My reinstall from the recovery disks seems to have failed, nonetheless. OTOH, at the moment the machine is doing something that looks like it has potential. I don't know what. In any case, on Wednesday, Gabe will either take the one with the new hard drive, or a Toshiba mini which lives here largely unused. I think my friend will help me get the main Toshiba laptop working sooner or later.

My thinking about PCs is that they are preferred by people who like to be able to repair things on their own, replace components as needed, and exercise some independence regarding the structure of their computers. Those of us who neither have nor feel inclined to acquire fairly extensive and detailed knowledge of the ways of operating systems will often run into hassles, headaches and roadblocks in keeping our pcs functional.

So, I think that whichever you prefer it's a matter of independence. PC users prefer the independence of being able to jigger with the thing's workings, reconfigure it the way they want, and swap things out as desired.
Mac users prefer feeling independent of the need to have a REALLY GOOD friend who is always available to fix the pc when it, inevitably, goes amiss.