[OT] Where to get stuff fixed?

[James Knott]

phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> If you can solder, it's usually worth cracking open the case (if you can
> figure out how!) to see if it's a simple repair.
>
> Also, one of my tech colleagues at Ryerson described pulling a flat streen
> video display out of the garbage. He replaced the 'poofy capacitors' (the
> ones that are obviously swollen) and a fuse, and the thing sprang to life.
> The toughest part, apparently, was figuring out how to open the case. The
> same tech repair wizard has fixed a number of motherboards with the same
> approach - it's often the capacitors that fail.
>
> It's quite satisfying to keep something like that out of the waste stream.
>
> Peter
>
>
>    
Quite so.  Many people can take the time to find & fix the problem on 
their own.  However, there's no way a service shop, where techs are paid 
by the hour, can afford to do this on many consumer items.  As you know, 
electronics have advanced considerably over the years, resulting in very 
inexpensive devices, compared to not that many years ago.  As an 
example, I used to service mini computer systems, including 200 MB disk 
pack drives.  One of those drives, back in those days, cost about as 
much as a house in Toronto and it made sense for me to spend hours, if 
necessary, performing a repair.  On the other hand, a couple of weeks 
ago, I bought a 500 GB IDE drive for $92.  There's no way you could pay 
a tech the money it would take to repair such a drive, for less than the 
cost of buying a replacement.
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