What You Need to Repair Toshiba Laptops - Part One

Today we are going to discuss the methodology and the principles behind a successful repair to any Toshiba Laptop.

I am not going to assume that you don't have any knowledge on this subject or to deduce you capability.

Most Toshiba Laptops are in fact very easy to work on, well made and accessible.
The driving factor that governs whether a machine can be repaired is as follows below.

Market value.

Availability of Parts and cost.

Time involved in the repair.

General state of the machine taking into account any other defects.

Tools and equipment required

Market Value
Determine the current market value of your laptop, if the motherboard on your laptop has failed but its costs more to buy the motherboard than it does to replace the entire laptop, then its not worth undertaking the repair. Generally speaking if the laptop has a simple fault, for example such as a faulty keyboard, then in most cases its worth the time and the cost of fitting a replacement. Most Toshiba parts are interchangeable with others especially on older laptops. Research the market, older laptops have now become so cheap its really not necessary to become involved in a repair of an old laptop, but for modern Toshiba Laptops say from 2005 onwards, any simple fault can be repaired easily and in most cases inexpensively.

Also it not advisable to fall into the trap of buying a new Toshiba laptop because the screen on the old laptop was perceived to be expensive, if you approach the right repairers or if you can source the parts yourself, it makes sense in many cases to replace the screen on a Toshiba laptop, rather than buying a new laptop from scratch. If you purchased a laptop say in 2007 for £649 (750USD) and it was a wide screen 15.4" X black(high brightness) you might get a quote for a replacement screen as high as say (180GBP or 210USD), but if you shopped around and found a screen for 125GBP(145USD) and if the laptop is still worth 250GBP(300USD approx) or upwards, then it makes sense to replace the screen. Perhaps you decided that you wanted a new laptop, then a really cheap unbranded 15.4" Wide screen laptop new at any leading supermarket chain might offer you one for 245GBP(295USD), which might turn out to be technically inferior to your original Toshiba Laptop. And don't forget you will have all the hassle of re-installing programs, transferring data, and extracting passwords and your security details and setting up your Internet and email accounts, these operations alone will take a lot longer than just changing the screen on your Toshiba laptop and if you factored in the labour charge if you were doing this as a paid employee you can see straight away the costs can spiral upwards.

This is why you should always research the market, compare what you would have to spend now to buy the equivalent rated machine then, and in most cases you will discover its cheaper to repair than replace.

Be aware on all laptops that they all suffer from depreciation from new, the worst depreciation seems to be with Toshiba Laptops that are Celerons, next the PII series, and then PIII series. Centrino's, Centrino Duo, and Duo core seem to be holding there value better and not suffering such big drops, the reason being is that these laptops are still reasonably fast and can run either Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Availability Of Parts and Cost
I would venture to say most people who are considering a non critical repair are completely unaware of cost of spare parts, the most costly parts for any Toshiba laptop is as follows

Screens

Motherboards

Batteries (2007 Model onwards)

And the least costly parts are as follows (second hand not new)

Memory

CD drives

Keyboards

Plastics

Hard disks

Invertors

Screens are the most expensive by far, for 15" 30 pin screens are still commanding very high prices but curiously enough these machines second hand are commanding very low second hand values, another pitfall here is that 15.4" wide screen prices are still quite high for new screens although more reasonable for second hand screens, and at the moment 17" Xblack and ultra bright high resolution screens can cost the same as the identical laptop in question particularly on the G series and some of the ultra light Porteges.

This means that if you own a Windscreen Toshiba Celeron Laptop but the screen might cost you about 125GBP(145USD) or more but the laptop is only worth 175GBP(200UD) then if is the case you might be better looking for a superior Toshiba laptop to replace it, and for only a little more on the second hand market.

Motherboards are out of the question and out of the scope of this book, unless its viable go for a replacement but otherwise don't bother refitting it is not for the faint hearted. better to buy a working base and then migrate all your parts into it.

Batteries have come down a lot in recent years, and I would always recommend buying a new battery after two years of use, batteries do degrade over time and its the simplest of all to do. If a machine starts to exhibit memory failures assuming that the motherboard is not faulty, memory modules are now cheap readily available from anywhere and very easy to fit. If you have seen my other post about upgrading Toshiba laptop CDROMS, replacing any drive in any Toshiba Laptop is well within most peoples ability, and very affordable. Keyboards are the only weak point on many Toshiba laptops older than 3 years old, most exhibit one or two keys that no longer function the good news here is that is very easy to fit a new or second hand keyboard on most Toshiba laptops. keyboards are around £15-£25 or 20USD-45USD (second hand). Hard disks are very easy to replace on 90% of all Toshiba Laptops as are screen inverters, and most plastics, but removal of plastics is a time consuming occupation, but the plastics are very cheap to buy.

I would like to thank you for reading this far, in the next part we will move onto part two.

-Benny Holden

If you want to know more about any Toshiba Laptop click on the Link below!
http://upgrademytosh.synthasite.com