Fix or Replace Laptop? Suggestions?

[Sugarphreak]

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[revelations]

Unless youre able to do the work yourself or are really attached to that PC - I wouldnt deal with that many issues in a repair/purchase consideration.

250$ is parts only but add hour labour for keyboard replacement, hour for basic drive swap plus time to clone or to rebuild the OS. Suddenly its 5-600$ for everything.

With dual drive systems, better battery life, etc. youre far better off buying new.

[ExtraSlow]

Do not fix.

[Sugarphreak]

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[MR2-3SGTE]

brand new hard drive 500gb with 64mb cache is about $70 (used ones for half that)
Keyboards can be found on ebay for $30-$40, sometimes less
OEM batteries are are probably close to $100, Chinese ones can be had for about half that, however they have shorter lifespan

I can put everything together and install OS in under an hour

An upgrade would be good if you need it, but I wouldn't write this one off. I would just toss in a used hard drive and change the keyboard and keep it as a backup, well under $100 to fix. Specs are still good for today's standards

[Boat]

New battery and solid state drive would give it some new life. I would say fix as long as you are willing to put some time in it. I think 250 is a good budget. You said you would look for something equivalent for around the same price? Not from a big box store. As well if you drop let's say 500 on a new laptop I don't think it would last you very long. Also if you get a solid state you can always use it in other rigs when you decide to invest in a real upgrade .

[CanmoreOrLess]

Your time ought to be valued, more than spending 12 hours plus dealing with an old ass computer with wonky parts added.

[Sugarphreak]

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[MR2-3SGTE]

They are. Unless it's a small super slim laptop, those may have something different. standard 14"+ laptops like yours would all use the same hard drive size/interface

[jwslam]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
Are hard drives for laptops fairly universal in size and interface?
They should all be 2.5" SATA. What you probably have is the traditional spinning drive. Solid state would significantly boost your applications / operating system loading times.

[revelations]

Since you're doing all the work - if you can find some similar-spec RAM, I would upgrade to 8gb while I'm inside as well (perhaps even swap all-new RAM out for max performance instead of dissimilar RAM).

SSD (256?) for sure if drive space isnt a huge consideration as it will also improve battery life by 20-30% (at least on mine it did).

If you can get another 5 years out of this machine after the "renovations", you've done well IMO .... :dunno:

[Sugarphreak]

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[D'z Nutz]

If it's something as simple as swapping out a hard drive, battery, and keyboard, and you can do the work yourself and it's already capable of handling what you need it for, it's a no brainer; put the time into fixing it.

Hard drives are cheap and since space isn't that big of a deal you can even save a few bucks by not needing to get the latest and greatest flavour of the day. Heck, 120GB SSD drives are as little as $80 nowadays and they always go on sale.

A quick search on eBay shows you can buy replacement batteries from China for under $40. I've bought one for my old Dell netbook and it's still holding a charge a couple years later. Looks like keyboards from China are about $20 too.

Sounds to me, you could probably have everything replaced for about $150 if you're not in any rush. Even then, the keyboard and battery aren't show stoppers if it needs to be functional ASAP. You can always use a USB keyboard until the new keyboard arrives.

[Sugarphreak]

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[jwslam]

Is that really a concern if you currently don't NEED better specs? It would make sense, say, if a newer version of AutoCAD requires you to have more RAM or video graphics... Otherwise why drop more money on new laptop for low gainz :dunno:

[CompletelyNumb]

Originally posted by Sugarphreak
I mostly am just not sure if the specs are still any good compared to today's laptops.

They aren't. And they never will be. Upgrade when you outgrow your current set up, not when something better comes along. IMO.

[Sugarphreak]

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[Sugarphreak]

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