Fried my lap top

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I fried my Laptop last night, You should smell it. I can tell just from the smell that it is a Resister or Diode. It was my fault because I covered the vents and it over heated. Lucky for me my son Had the same lap top. So I stole his lap top and put in my hard drive. I now need to get a new one for for him. So if you see a really good deal before Xmas let me know.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Frank, sorry to hear about your laptop. There are a couple of outfits outthere now that do board level repairs on laptops for some things. If it happens to be something they can fix it's a lot cheaper than a new mother board which is what te manufacturer would tell you needs to be done. One of them is laptoprescue.com out of N or S Carolina (I think). I had a problem with the power plug on my son's Dell laptop and Dell said they would have to replace the mother board at $800 or so ad laptoprescue put a new power plug on the mother board for about $150. They claim to be able to do some other mother board repairs also. Might be worth contacting them.
As an aside, you've got to stop using your laptop in the "hot tub"!!

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Sounds like you need a Woot Off right about now!

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Thanks Ken I may have to look into it. It turns out that my Sons lap top cuts out after a half hour and yes I do have a fan under it.

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

What brand and model do you have? Sounds like a need to stay away from them.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

What brand and model do you have? Sounds like a need to stay away from them.

Compaq which is HP.

[wackymother Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close wackymother]

Dell has some incredible deals--I see their ads on the back of Parade magazine on Sundays, I think. My DD's 4yo laptop is a Dell and it's okay. Nothing spectacular, but okay.

Just remember, Frank, your DS will probably need a new computer when he goes off to college, especially if he's studying anything techie. All the schools my DD is looking at have very specific requirements for the computers and software that the incoming freshmen will need.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Just remember, Frank, your DS will probably need a new computer when he goes off to college, especially if he's studying anything techie. All the schools my DD is looking at have very specific requirements for the computers and software that the incoming freshmen will need.

Yes I am aware of him having to get a new lap top for School. So far all the Schools he is looking at sell the lap tops to the kids pre programed and with a warrenty from the School.

[wackymother Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close wackymother]

Yes I am aware of him having to get a new lap top for School. So far all the Schools he is looking at sell the lap tops to the kids pre programed and with a warrenty from the School.

That's what I mean. You're just looking for an in-the-meantime laptop unless he's doing a lot of high-powered stuff on his own computer. At DD's HS she's working in some programs that we don't have. But she does the hard stuff at school, on their computers.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

I am glad that you could save your hard disk so haven't lost any data. I fried my Mac external HD the other day and lost years of personal data. I am still sick about it but I have all my photo images on CDs so didn't lose them. I don't trust external HDs anymore.

[camachinist Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close camachinist]

Emmy, just set up your external drives as a RAID array and replace the drives every 2 years. I only power ours up when running network backups, so I'm sure they'd last longer than that, but it seems things aren't made the way they used to be, in terms of longevity. I've lost two HD platter bearings in the last 8 months, fortunately not in the backup array.

When you said you lost "years of data", I assumed the external drive was your primary backup. I also backup to DVD (MO for our older units) as a redundancy for critical data (like financial, pictures, documents, etc.). I still have Zip and floppy disks from backups done as long as 14 years ago stored out in the office. Someday I'll pull them out and stroll down memory lane

Frank, I'd just sell the dead laptop on eBay with an accurate description of the problem. I've done this with my last two Mac laptops that died (motherboard problems) and got decent money for them (nearly 200.00 for my late model G4 iBook). My rule is I fix them once and they're gone the next time. Yes, I know I can part them out and make more money, but my time and stress are worth more to me...

Pat

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Frank, I'd just sell the dead laptop on eBay with an accurate description of the problem. I've done this with my last two Mac laptops that died (motherboard problems) and got decent money for them (nearly 200.00 for my late model G4 iBook). My rule is I fix them once and they're gone the next time. Yes, I know I can part them out and make more money, but my time and stress are worth more to me...

Pat

I did not even think of selling it, I may just do that. My sons lap top keeps shuting down so I want to seeif I could use a part from old smoky.

[wackymother Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close wackymother]

old smoky.

LOL!

[m61376 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close m61376]

There's sure to be several Black Friday deals if you are looking for a cheap replacement- Gottadeal.com has a large Black Friday ad discussion in advance, and I'm sure there will be many postings on Fatwallet.com and Slickdeals.net.

If you're willing to spend $$'s and want something better, then you really should look at Portableone.com. They carry Sony, Panasonic, Asus and their own machines, which mostly are modified Asus machines. Their machines start at 12-1300 and go into the low 2k, but their service is unbelievable. I keep on raving about them because I just can't believe what great cs these guys give. They have regular bus. hours (but are in Cal.), not 24 hour support- BUT a real person always answers the phone, you get real tech support and they are great even post-sale.

We bought a laptop for my daughter for law school 2 years ago. She gives it more use than most people do over the course of many more years, and it is crammed in a bag with books in and out all day. There was a problem with the AC jack and it was running hot. A couple of quick e-mails and a phone call and they asked for it to be sent back to them, rather than the on-site service, so they could reapply the thermal protection which they add to the machine (and evidentally does wear out over time with extensive use). Anyway, it was sent on Friday and back in her hands on Tuesday.

I don't know if any other company where you can frequently talk to the owner (Ivan) and/or get a quick e-mail response from him. They will even patiently do any software tweaking with you, etc.- these guys are just amazing. My friend's son didn't realize that Windows was installed () and re-installed it on his new machine, messing up the driver settings, etc.. They nicely even talked him through re-doing everything.

I know I sound like an ad for them- but, really, just want to pass the word along because I've been so impressed. Dell's cheaper, but for quality and service, if you can afford it, these guys are much better. Because of the high heat and airspace restriction in laptops, they are inherently problematic and the cheaper machines are great for Internet playing and non-critical use, but if you are going to give it a lot of use and/or store imp. info. on it, not buying a cheap machine may be a better investment.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

There's sure to be several Black Friday deals if you are looking for a cheap replacement- Gottadeal.com has a large Black Friday ad discussion in advance, and I'm sure there will be many postings on Fatwallet.com and Slickdeals.net.

If you're willing to spend $$'s and want something better, then you really should look at Portableone.com. They carry Sony, Panasonic, Asus and their own machines, which mostly are modified Asus machines. Their machines start at 12-1300 and go into the low 2k, but their service is unbelievable. I keep on raving about them because I just can't believe what great cs these guys give. They have regular bus. hours (but are in Cal.), not 24 hour support- BUT a real person always answers the phone, you get real tech support and they are great even post-sale.

We bought a laptop for my daughter for law school 2 years ago. She gives it more use than most people do over the course of many more years, and it is crammed in a bag with books in and out all day. There was a problem with the AC jack and it was running hot. A couple of quick e-mails and a phone call and they asked for it to be sent back to them, rather than the on-site service, so they could reapply the thermal protection which they add to the machine (and evidentally does wear out over time with extensive use). Anyway, it was sent on Friday and back in her hands on Tuesday.

I don't know if any other company where you can frequently talk to the owner (Ivan) and/or get a quick e-mail response from him. They will even patiently do any software tweaking with you, etc.- these guys are just amazing. My friend's son didn't realize that Windows was installed () and re-installed it on his new machine, messing up the driver settings, etc.. They nicely even talked him through re-doing everything.

I know I sound like an ad for them- but, really, just want to pass the word along because I've been so impressed. Dell's cheaper, but for quality and service, if you can afford it, these guys are much better. Because of the high heat and airspace restriction in laptops, they are inherently problematic and the cheaper machines are great for Internet playing and non-critical use, but if you are going to give it a lot of use and/or store imp. info. on it, not buying a cheap machine may be a better investment.

Thank you for the info. I should have updated this thread, I ordered a new HP laptop that sold for $1600 plus tax but I had a 20% off coupon. I just today got a 30% off coupon and there crediting me over $200 more. Code is NB3025, good till Oct 9