> “...For instance, we salvage parts from old laptop motherboards, such as capacitors, mouse pads, transistors, diodes, and certain ICs and use them in the newly refurbished ones,” says Prasad.
This highlights the problem of parts availability, especially for older laptops (10 years old or even older). Since no one, the original manufacturer as well as the "dup(licat)ors", is going to make parts for laptops that old.
During my own attempt to revive my old laptops, I had to buy three different keyboards, each costs around $8, from 2 different recycling shop, to "Frankenstein" a working and fairly new-looking one. And then the screen bezel and palm rest is another struggle. One total revival ended up costed me around $50 and 2 weeks, and give up on another one.
I imagine in order for laptop/electronic repairing to work reliably, manufactures needs to create standardized parts, like what happened to desktop PCs. But that hasn't happened since ...ever?
I remember that my old HP nc8430 from 2006 cost only 20 Euro some 10 years later. I could have bought a couple of them for spares if I planned to keep it running. The problem was that the GPU run out of software support circa 2012 and I had to pin the Linux kernel to a 3.1x version. An open source driver apparently made it into the kernel many years later but I never checked if it actually works. I bought a new laptop in 2014 which is a kind of Frankenstein on its own nowadays. I replaced the screen (a defective hinge under warranty), the RAM (maxed it out at 32 GB), the HDD with a 2 TB SSD, the DVD burner with another SSD, the keyboard many times as it wears out and maybe that's it.
It is somewhat standard. CPU, memory, drives, LCD. The only thing not standard is the motherboard. With 3d printing, you can print your own base to contain the motherboard, plug all those parts back in, screw on the LCD. Framework Computer is doing repairable laptops
This highlights the problem of parts availability, especially for older laptops (10 years old or even older). Since no one, the original manufacturer as well as the "dup(licat)ors", is going to make parts for laptops that old.
During my own attempt to revive my old laptops, I had to buy three different keyboards, each costs around $8, from 2 different recycling shop, to "Frankenstein" a working and fairly new-looking one. And then the screen bezel and palm rest is another struggle. One total revival ended up costed me around $50 and 2 weeks, and give up on another one.
I imagine in order for laptop/electronic repairing to work reliably, manufactures needs to create standardized parts, like what happened to desktop PCs. But that hasn't happened since ...ever?