What Kills Laptops
- We've told many of you that the number 1- 2 & 3 laptop repairs are hard drive, power jack and LCD replacement but they are not the prime killers of laptops. These things are usually economically feasible to repair.
- How do I figure that(?) many of you wonder when you see laptops advertised constantly by Staples, Best Buy, Dell and others for $400-500
- Those advertised prices are the ones that stick in most peoples minds when contemplating repair vs new purchases.
- And that's fine, most of us who are still repairing machines are fully aware of the power of advertising and fully respect your right to make decisions that are right for you. If you know where the market segments are and how it works there is no lack of business to keep us occupied.
- That said, a couple of hundred dollars to fix something that will likely cost you hundreds more to replace makes sense unless it's getting old.
However.................
- Most consumers still spend an average of $800.00 - $1000.00 on laptop purchases, a fact retailers are completely aware of. It is also a fact that repair tech's at Staples, Best Buy Geek Squad and plenty of others must by company policy spend a fair amount of time on the sales floor selling product. The common spin on this is that it keeps tech's more in touch with consumers needs and adds familiarity with current product and that has some validity.
- It would, however, have a whole heck of a LOT more validity if I and many many others like myself didn't spend so darn much time fixing what can't be repaired, according to what they tell consumers.
- So, is the priority on servicing customers needs or solely on selling new product? Judge for yourselves.
So That Brings Us To The Point Of This Article
The number 1 and number 2 killers of laptops are ................
- Overheating due to misuse and or abuse .......
- Overheating due to exceptionally poor design
Want To Know More? Read On........
- Flip your laptop over, on the bottom you'll see air vents, often round. (Sometimes you'll see as many as 4, a definite sign of poor design. if it needs that much heat wicked away, it has a tendency to overheat from the get go) Under those air vents is a small but highly efficient fan. It's function is to draw cool air in from the bottom and blow it across the fins of a heat sink (essentially a radiator with thin fins like on your car) and push heat away from the inside of your laptop. Look on the side or back and you'll see more air vents. When you laptop is running you should hear the fan running and feel warm air being pushed out those side or back vents. If you can't hear the fan running it's either not running because it's clogged or because the fan is burnt out. Either way you're now doing a slow cooking of your laptop.
- Now, how do you use your laptop, where does it sit? On a pillow. on your leg, on the couch or arm of your chair, how about the rug or the grass? Is your house old, dusty, forced hot air heat, pets around shedding? That stuff makes it's way inside your laptop and clogs those heat sinks. You're clogging that cool air intake vent. No cool air in means no hot air pushed out and it does a slow cook.
- Computers are essentially a collection of circuits and transistors (switches just like light switches but much smaller). They run much faster than ever. CPU's. Front Side Busses, Hard Drives, Memory all run faster. At the same time circuit sizes have shrunk and the use of gold (a great conductor of electricity) has lessened) . Faster means more electricity being pushed around those circuits and through those switches. More and faster means more resistance and resistance means HEAT!!!
- How hot you ask? Well that's a great question. Laptops have been known to catch fire, not just from short circuits but from pure heat buildup. Not often but it is fairly common to find melted spots on the high impact, high temperature resistant plastics used in most consumer laptop cases. On the internal circuit boards most components are soldered on to the board. The solder generally used to join those components to the board and associated circuits (traces) have melting points of anywhere from about 450 f to 850 f. At manufacturing level I'm told most soldering uses solder that melts at around 650 f. Components have been known to de solder themselves from their circuit boards due to internal overheating and in fact there is a current crop of consumer machines in which this problem is quite common. (More on that later) That's hot enough to cause instant severe 3rd degree burns if you were to touch one of these components with a fingertip. There's a reason laptop cooling pads came into being folks.
- The misuse and abuse of your laptop isn't your fault folks. Did your salesman warn you of any of this? If he even knows and understands it of course. Retailers don't want to scare you off a purchase so sins of omission are very common.
Which brings us to overheating due to poor design.....................
- As consumers we do share in some culpability in this issue. consumers scream for ever cheaper, sleeker, more stylish, slimmer, lighter designs. The manufacturers respond adding features, sliming down components to fit in ever smaller cases and all the while running faster and faster. More features, faster, more electricity, more heat and less room in the case for heat buildup to circulate and escape. Toss a lil dog hair or dust inside to clog the fan and a 3 month old laptop cooks itself to death. Retailer or manufacturer denies your claim because when they opened it up back at the factory service center they found a massive clog in the fan and heat sink. Happens every day. More commonly though is it happens shortly after any warranty runs out.
- Virtually every manufacturer has at one time or another had it's problems with heat related issues. Often it seems to come in particular lines of laptops, most often in consumer grade models. Most of these seem to come out of China based factories which are not always the cleanest. A bit of dust that gets into circuit board manufacturing or when components get soldered to those circuit boards can cause major problems. And when a Brand name company awards a manufacturing subcontract to a factory because they had the lowest bid then all too often a 2 cent copper shim (or something akin to that) that might have helped wick away heat from a critical component doesn't get added. That's about what seems to have happened to a current crop of spectularly popular laptops. A thinner component that couldn't take the heat buildup was used that is infamous for excellent performance and is therefore considered highly desirable but it was added without consideration to the consequences of not adding something to help wick heat away better so it desolders itself. In SPECTULAR numbers!!! And the name brand manufacturer (no names) dances with complaining consumers to keep the number of circuit boards it has to replace down even when replacing them didn't keep the problem from recurring. This is a manufacturer who's laptops are a major line offered in virtually every major retailer.
So how do you protect yourself?
- Well if you have one of those low cost laptops you need to understand it's likely you have a CPU which runs hotter than better grades of CPU's to begin with so you need to take extra care. Just because your friend had good luck with a particular brand or model doesn't mean you will. Is his/hers sitting on a cooling pad on a nice clean desk while yours sits on a pillow in your lap in front of the TV? HUGE difference in the way you use them even if what you use them for is similar. Get a couple of cans of compressed air and GENTLY blow the dust out of those vent ports now and then. DON'T use a compressor for this as it'll usually blow in water, oil and too much air breaking components which will kill your laptop right quick. If you see lots of dust coming out, big clumps of dust or don't hear the fan running, shut it off and get it too someone and tell them that. Usually under $100.00 to clean it out but not always, some require a complete breakdown to get at the fans and that can run several hours.
What Do I Look For When Buying A New Laptop ?
- Well, as a rule of thumb these days forget about anything you find in retail stores. Cost doesn't guarantee quality at all. Start by looking at mid range business class laptops. You'll generally (not always) get fewer features but a LITTLE better design, a LITTLE bit more rugged and durable machine and a Little better class of components as well as a LITTLE better and longer warranty. At a very rough range for a 15.4" Wide screen with fairly current specs figure on somewhere in the $800-1500.00 range. I personally figure this is about the right place for most people IF you're willing to give it the care it needs to keep it running well.
- Moving up from there can still get you a nice metal base which helps wick away ambient interior heat (as long as you don't leave it in the sun) , some shock mounting for the hard drive, maybe even a solid state drive so you don't have to worry about instantly dead hard drives when dropped from more than 6 inches, and much better internal components .You'll also get better tech support, a better warranty, reduced turn around times on repairs and so on. Figure $1500-2500.00 roughly
- From there on up, the sky is the limit really. Panasonic Ruggidized Toughbooks were designed to work in the extremes of desert, arctic and oceans.$5000-10,000.00 isn't impossible at all and in fact some run quite a bit more. Lenovo quite some time ago acquired the Thinkpad line from IBM and still makes some very good machines but the good ones are still pricey.
- Seriously, If you want to toss it in the trunk from 10 feet away, bounce it around offroading, freeze it on your skidoo, take it on motorcycle weekends or offshore fishing, let the dog toss it around as a play toy, drop your drink into it and not worry, spend $10,000.00 for a Panasonic Ruggidized Toughbook every 3-5 years or so. Much older than 5 years and it's becoming obsolete anyway.