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Notebook PC Manufacturer Who Will Sell Parts?
gp310ad asks: "Fujitsu refused to sell me a basic part for my P2120 notebook PC. The part is the small daughter board which bridges the external charger to the internal circuitry. It is approximately two square cm with two connectors mounted. There are no passive or active electronic components on the board. I was told that I would have to complete Fujitsu technical training before I would be allowed to purchase this or any other part that requires removing more than two screws. According to Fujitsu, the hard drive (three screws) is 'not a user replaceable part'. Which brings me to my question — I am in the market for a new notebook PC and would like to know which manufacturers are 'end user friendly' when it comes to out of warranty repair parts. The model and features will be determined by what is available within my budget. However, I do not want to be stuck with an out of warranty machine from a manufacturer who will not sell parts."
They sell their parts with or without the training. I picked up a few parts myself for a T40 Thinkpad which had a bad network board (wired and wifi), and a broken PCMCIA slot cover. They have full video's and instructions on how to disasemble thier Thinkpad series, from removing the keyboard, to replacing the steel cage that houses the removable media bay.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Believe it or not, alot of the parts in a mac laptop can be bought from dealers and people who fix them. Most want to install them but alot of repair sites will sell the parts to you direct.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I have an old pentium3 gateway laptop. I have a processor to put in it, but I have no idea where I would find the thermal pad it needs, so it's just collecting dust right now. Does anyone know where you can find this sort of thing?
From the innovative company that uses laptop parts in their desktops and non upgradeable parts in their laptops.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
I'm not sure about the US, but here in Australia a manufacturer refusing to sell parts of their machines to the general public would run a pretty good risk of breaching the Trade Practices Act.
They'd just sell the parts at a ridiculous price, of course.
What's wrong with that? You end up with a very quiet desktop with low energy consumption. Since the box is bigger, you actually have a lot of leeway as far as heat sink designs, so the desktop can be made to run cool as well.
-b.
Consider looking at non-mainstream, customizable notebooks, known as whitebooks. These notebooks are often made by the same manufacturers as those of Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and other brand names. There are only a handful of ODMs (original design manufacturers), the companies that actually make the notebooks, in the world, the two largest being Quanta and Compal; ASUS lags behind them but is making its way up to the top three.
With whitebooks, you will never get a laptop cheaper than through, say, Dell, but you will get much higher quality components for the buck, greater customization options, excellent warranty options and of course, you can buy the parts! Whitebooks are normally purchased through notebook resellers. My favorite is PowerNotebooks.com, but there are plenty of others such as ProPortable.com.
Current models to check out would be the Compal HEL80 and HGL30 and ASUS S96J and W3J. Check out the reviews and the forums at NotebookReview.com (better known as NBR). That site was a tremendous resource for me and helped me decide on the Compal HEL80 for myself.
It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.