India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

Part of the appeal of refurbished computers is that currently, fresh new laptops and tablets have reached a horrible minimum-quality. I have chewed myself and our household through a possibly obscene number of laptops, tablets and smartphones over the last 15 years or so. One of the villains in this story is Asus.

An ugly pattern emerges. In my country, there is mandatory 2year warranty on bought electronics - if it breaks before 24 months, the retailer owes you a working specimen. Well, what do you know.. I see a pattern of a lot of these items breaking before 3 years have passed. It is almost as if some hierarchy of managers have dictated "can you make this thing last for 25 months, but no further than that?"

- 1 the non-replacable battery will die, leaving the device a brick.

- 2 the power management IC will die, so the system refuses to light up or receive electrical current.

- 3 often, when (2) happens, the motherboard will be toasted as a by-product, leaving you to pay 600 DKK to have the retailer inform you "we have looked at your device, unfortunately the motherboard died, so repairing it will cost you same price as brand new. Thank you for the 600 you paid to have us tell you that".

Within the last year, I have had two separate Asus VivoBooks die on me, both after about 24 months of use - but critically, ">24", so no repair/warranty. One of them a DKK-10.000 purchase, the other a DKK-6.500 purchase. Neither of them have seen particular abuse, they were used by me, as "household pets" - so laptops that never left the couch.

I have taken a long time to learn this, but my learned lesson is that I have stopped buying these "10k DKK for 24 months of laptop" devices.

I am a pathological computer hoarder, and I have plenty of desktop PCs that are still alive and kicking after 10+ years (in which I may understandably have to replace PSUs).

The scam/grift that suppliers like Asus are operating on comsumer devices, is that the PMIC is designed to fail, is soldered into the motherboard, and that they love whenever the failing PMIC kills the motherboard during its death throes.

20 years is a bit much but a 10 year old laptop can still browse normal websites. Just not the javascript loaden addfactories.

Doesn't mean you dump it after 2-3 years because a new fancy models comes along or the battery is not repairable because it's welded shut.

Nehru place was almost 100% scammers than real geniuses but definitely the place if you wanted a custom computing rig. The food was good enough, like you said but the prospect of having a 2GB RAM module made you salivate even more!

The neighboring areas also had electronics importers that proved super helpful. You could find some of the most "lethal" tech with their help. I got myself some powerful FPGA kits that are normally not accessible outside defense, academia, and select licensed labs. I have great admiration for those folks who let me lay my hands over the most powerful technology of that time.

I "fixed" broken hinge on a Dell laptop using some mseal. Sort of worked.

I would have made it needlessly complex by gluing a set of strong neodymium magnets on the exterior and a set of small flat magnets on the screen side to avoid the risks of drilling and protruding bolts.

Of course gluing or taping are also viable options ?