Am I being taken for a ride?

motorguy

Wynnester wrote: »

I thought it was a lot just to solder something onto the motherboard...

You have to physically strip the laptop right down to get to the board then perform the soldering. It could take an easy 2 hours each way to do that.

Pikeyp

Did the shop give you the old hard-drive back?

You might find it's still under warranty from the manufacturer , Western Digital/Samsung etc .. and if so , you could send it to them for a free replacement!

I know WD and Samsung give a 3 year warranty on thier hard-drives , not sure about other manufacturers though.

Russel245

After about 2 years, probably 60% of laptops will start suffering hardware failures. You could keep it going, but it will probably be expensive to do so.

I would tend to aim to replace ever 2 years. Also, you may want to reconsider using a web shop, many of them do operate by ripping people off. I'm not going to call this incident one way or another, but I would have just sent the laptop to Sony for repairs. (Though a shop would likely be faster).

(Soldering a new chip onto a motherboard sounds a bit questionable though, that's not something I've ever heard of a repair shop doing)

busenbust

My Sony Vaio Windows ME machine is still going (strong) after 9/10 yrs! :shocked:

fiddiwebb

JasX

I regard most laptops as disposable after 3-4 years max, they tend to get relegated to elderly relatives who barely know how to email each other.

Now, now.....I thought they would just type a message, wrapped the laptop up and post it in the mail to the recipient

xyz123

Have you tried to take it to some other repairer to get a second technical opinion....that would be a good idea.

Wynnester

xyz123 wrote: »

Have you tried to take it to some other repairer to get a second technical opinion....that would be a good idea.

That's a good idea....at least then I'll be confident that it'll be fixed this time.

Wynnester

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Personally id cut my losses and get a new laptop

If I did go down this route then I might as well go for something with a bit of oomph that can easily edit HD video footage. It'd have to be sub £1500. I've seen the Acer Aspire 8943G - Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5850, BluRay writer. Any other laptops I should consider that might be more suitable/ cheaper but as good? Oh, and I need a firewire port......

Thanks everyone for your replies so far.

JasX

Wynnester wrote: »

If I did go down this route....

the advice that that paragraph screams is get a DESKTOP to do that kind of stuff and a more moderate laptop on top to do less demanding stuff if you need portability too (and you'll have plenty left in the kitty after getting both.....)

....failing that have a look at a decent specced gx740 if you can find one in stock, and perhaps order one of these at the same time

http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.list.tpl&type=Notebook%20coolers&type_sub=NB%20Coolers

busenbust

Wynnester wrote: »

If I did go down this route then I might as well go for something with a bit of oomph that can easily edit HD video footage. It'd have to be sub £1500. I've seen the Acer Aspire 8943G - Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5850, BluRay writer. Any other laptops I should consider that might be more suitable/ cheaper but as good? Oh, and I need a firewire port......

Thanks everyone for your replies so far.

the i7 is premium; the i5 is just as good for your needs -- cheaper too.