Just wondering (so it probably isn’t GQ territory) as I have a not quite working Acer Aspire 5100. The mother board has gone and it’ll cost about £99 to buy a replacement part, never mind pay to get it replaced, going on what I see on EBay.
I then spotted this broken model going for £70 at the time of posting and this hot on its wheels. Are laptops really that cost effective to repair and reuse?
I’m tempted to sell mine this way and use it to offset the cost of a new laptop, or should I reconsider? Could I fit a different, cheaper motherboard into mine to get it working again? Dad gave me a lend of a 1Ghz PIII with 256MB of RAM, which is a lifeline for a bit of study I do in the evenings, but a bit of a drag for music, video etc.
Laptop displays are fragile things and easily ruined. (One of the leading causes of laptop death is not noticing a pen or pencil on the keyboard when you close the lid - happens a lot when people leave meetings or when the train is pulling into their station and they need to get off the train in a hurry) General falls and getting knocked around also kill a lot of laptop displays.
As a result, there’s a booming market in laptops with good displays.
The chances of wedging a different motherboard in to replace your dead motherboard are none to none. Unlike desktop PCs, there’s no standard sizes across manufacturers, and not even among models of any given brand name.