I had an HP laptop bought in 2016, that worked like a charm and worked perfectly till 2023, when I upgraded to Windows 11, which wasn't supported on it. But in Delhi's Nehru Place, I got the damn thing repaired several times for several times, including battery repairs, a broken keyboard amongst other things, that extended its life quite well. In fact, I was open to using it for more years, though the HDD kind of sucked compared to the SSD.
India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
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Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#12I grew up in a village, where literally nothing goes waste. Eevrything is recycled. You can't think of anything that is junk. Animal poop and rotten bio-waste makes a great fertilizer for crops. Metal waste is melt by blacksmith, Wood in any form or shape is highly reusable. Plastics are almost absent, but they are sold in exchange for onions etc. Fabric is extremely reused. After reusing multiple time, things end up in a dump at the corner of own premises, which degrades and becomes fertilizer, in time for next crop.
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#13It's simple, the labour cost for repair is lower than the replacement cost, we also have people scavenging for valuables in landfills. As/When India will become rich enough, this will become uneconomical. Long term solution is to force companies to build products with repairability in mind.
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#14My Dell XPS-15 laptop's screen was falling off. To fix it, I drilled holes right though the border area of the screen and fitted 4 bolts so that the screen stays with the laptop. My colleagues were horrified to see large bolts at the back of the screen, but everything worked like a charm.
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#15During my middle school days, we lived in a small town for a little while (read: A place where i was allowed to take my bicycle out onto the main road).
After school, I used to spend a lot of time just hanging out around some TV and radio repair shops and just watched them work. They used to be friendly and gave me parts like spare motors, lights that were lying around from broken Walkmans they wouldn't repair. I took those motors and added to my bicycle as a "dynamo light" , built "wired RC car" etc ...
Fast forward to a few years ago when i got into building racing drones, soldering certain tiny wires was difficult for me. I went to a nearby mobile repair shop to get that done and he was happy to help me out.
I owe a lot of my curiosity and my knowledge today to these repair shops.
It's not a good thing that our electronics are becoming less and less repairable these days. No wonder these repair shops are vanishing as the time progresses.
The closest thing to that we have these days are makerspaces. At our local makerspace we encourage people try to fix their broken electronics instead of throwing them away. But I feel like there should be more.
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#16This reminded me of something that happened to a friend of mine not long ago. He’d just been laid off from a pretty good Salesforce Admin job and was already in a tight spot financially when his laptop’s motherboard fried after a voltage spike. Local shops were quoting ₹25,000–₹30,000 (roughly $300–$360), which he just couldn’t afford. Then a friend told him about Nehru Place. He sent the laptop there through someone…
I could also see unscrupulous businesses swapping out original parts in machines sent for repair for cheaper ones as a way to drive their costs down. The vast majority of customers wouldn’t be able to tell/prove what happened.
Spare parts are expensive in general in India. Add to the fact that there are unscrupulous repair centers, I am certain that the theft of genuine parts happen regularly.
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#17This reminded me of something that happened to a friend of mine not long ago. He’d just been laid off from a pretty good Salesforce Admin job and was already in a tight spot financially when his laptop’s motherboard fried after a voltage spike. Local shops were quoting ₹25,000–₹30,000 (roughly $300–$360), which he just couldn’t afford. Then a friend told him about Nehru Place. He sent the laptop there through someone…
Delhi NCR in general looks like a pretty nice place to source tech in India. The Bangalore counterpart of Nehru Place, SP Road felt expensive and a bit less competent than I expected.
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#18My Dell XPS-15 laptop's screen was falling off. To fix it, I drilled holes right though the border area of the screen and fitted 4 bolts so that the screen stays with the laptop. My colleagues were horrified to see large bolts at the back of the screen, but everything worked like a charm.
My classmate at the university had a laptop that first developed lines on the screen that he fixed by strategically cramming pieces of paper between the bezel and the LCD panel, and then eventually the hinges broke so he carried a book stand to prop up the lid. He did get a new laptop eventually iirc
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#19Happens a lot in China too.
https://www.hwcooling.net/en/recycling-in-china-laptop-cpus-...
Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
#20Happens a lot in China too. https://www.hwcooling.net/en/recycling-in-china-laptop-cpus-...
Less so now than a decade ago. You need to watch them while they repair it, I learned that the hard way.