Saturday, June 7, 2014

Time To Buy A New Laptop

It is beginning to have thermal faults again.  I tried to disassemble it to get to the fan, but even with very detailed instructions, I could not figure out how to get the motherboard out of the case.  There are local repair shops that will do it for $75, but if it is the heat sink, that's a bit more money.  That's not dramatically cheaper than some of the slightly used notebooks coming off lease at Tiger Direct.

Or just mount the laptop on a big block of dry ice.

4 comments:

  1. TigerDirect and newegg.com are the places to go for mail order laptops, I think. And does Boise have shops selling off-lease units? there are a bunch of such shops in Cincinnati.

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  2. I have the same heat issue with my laptop, especially since moving to Idaho 3 years ago with all its dust. I'm not at the point where I can countenance moving all my apps to another machine (my data is all redundantly backed up, of course), so I take my rig to a computer shop in Boise once a year for "heat maintenance," having them open the case, blow out all the dust and check the solder connections to the heat sink. It's about $100 per event, but given the time cost of money that's still a good investment for me. They do it in a single day so I don't lose any productivity.

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  3. I have had good luck blowing into the fan vents using a Giotto Rocket intended for photographic use. I suppose any other air source would work too.

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