Today we are going to discuss the methodology and the principles behind a successful repair to any Toshiba Laptop.
I am not going to assume that you don’t have any knowledge on this subject or to deduce you capability.
Most Toshiba Laptops are in fact very easy to work on, well made and accessible. The driving factor that governs whether a machine can be repaired is as follows below.
Market value.
Availability of Parts and cost.
Time involved in the repair.
General state of the machine taking into account any other defects.
Tools and equipment required
Market Value
Determine the current market value of your laptop, if the motherboard on your laptop has failed but its costs more to buy the motherboard than it does to replace the entire laptop, then its not worth undertaking the repair. Generally speaking if the laptop has a simple fault, for example such as a faulty keyboard, then in most cases its worth the time and the cost of fitting a replacement. Most Toshiba parts are interchangeable with others especially on older laptops. Research the market, older laptops have now become so cheap its really not necessary to become involved in a repair of an old laptop, but for modern Toshiba Laptops say from 2005 onwards, any simple fault can be repaired easily and in most cases inexpensively.
dell i3 11th generation laptop Also it not advisable to fall into the trap of buying a new Toshiba laptop because the screen on the old laptop was perceived to be expensive, if you approach the right repairers or if you can source the parts yourself, it makes sense in many cases to replace the screen on a Toshiba laptop, rather than buying a new laptop from scratch. If you purchased a laptop say in 2007 for £649 (750USD) and it was a wide screen 15.4″ X black(high brightness) you might get a quote for a replacement screen as high as say (180GBP or 210USD), but if you shopped around and found a screen for 125GBP(145USD) and if the laptop is still worth 250GBP(300USD approx) or upwards, then it makes sense to replace the screen. Perhaps you decided that you wanted a new laptop, then a really cheap unbranded 15.4″ Wide screen laptop new at any leading supermarket chain might offer you one for 245GBP(295USD), which might turn out to be technically inferior to your original Toshiba Laptop. And don’t forget you will have all the hassle of re-installing programs, transferring data, and extracting passwords and your security details and setting up your Internet and email accounts, these operations alone will take a lot longer than just changing the screen on your Toshiba laptop and if you factored in the labour charge if you were doing this as a paid employee you can see straight away the costs can spiral upwards.
This is why you should always research the market, compare what you would have to spend now to buy the equivalent rated machine then, and in most cases you will discover its cheaper to repair than replace.
Be aware on all laptops that they all suffer from depreciation from new, the worst depreciation seems to be with Toshiba Laptops that are Celerons, next the PII series, and then PIII series. Centrino’s, Centrino Duo, and Duo core seem to be holding there value better and not suffering such big drops, the reason being is that these laptops are still reasonably fast and can run either Windows Vista or Windows XP.
Availability Of Parts and Cost
I would venture to say most people who are considering a non critical repair are completely unaware of cost of spare parts, the most costly parts for any Toshiba laptop is as follows
Screens
Motherboards
Batteries (2008 Model onwards)
And the least costly parts are as follows (second hand not new)
Memory
CD drives
Keyboards
Plastics
Hard disks
Invertors
Screens are the most expensive by far, for 15″ 30 pin screens are still commanding very high prices but curiously enough these machines second hand are commanding very low second hand values, another pitfall here is that 15.4″ wide screen prices are still quite high for new screens although more reasonable for second hand screens, and at the moment 17″ Xblack and ultra bright high resolution screens can cost the same as the identical laptop in question particularly on the G series and some of the ultra light Porteges.