I recently wrote about fixing a couple of laptops in How I Fixed Two Lenovo Yoga Laptops, and a few days later, the owner sent me four more to look at. In fact, she was about to trash them, but being the geek I am, I suggested otherwise and began my inspection.
Lenovo Ideapad U310 Touch (2013)
With an Intel Core i3 3227U CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a touchscreen, this is a perfectly capable laptop. However, the right-hand hinge has somehow come away from its fixing in the lid, rendering the laptop difficult to use because the screen needs to be supported and/or leaned against something to stay upright.
Repairing the hinge fixing is not for the faint-hearted, and the only way it can be done economically is to use an epoxy cement, which results in a rock-hard finish. I may or may not tackle that in the future, hoping that I don’t damage the screen.
Lenovo Yoga 7 141TL5 (2020)
This one is particularly disappointing because of its high specs. The left-hand hinge has come away from the lid, and like the Ideapad above, there don’t seem to be any signs of it having been dropped. Furthermore, it won’t take a charge, won’t boot, and shows no signs of life.
I’ll keep trying to breathe life into this one because there is a slim chance that it could be repaired. If not, it’s only good for spares.
All I can ascertain is that it has a 512GB NVMe, maybe an Intel EVO Core i7, and possibly 16GB RAM, but the memory is soldered to the motherboard. Anyway, if I have any luck, I’ll report back.
Sony Vaio VGN-SZ460N (2007)
Clearly, this laptop is a museum piece, and it’s in reasonable condition considering its age. At the time of its release, it was a good bit of kit with a dual-core Intel Centrino T7200 CPU, 2GB RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. It also has a webcam and microphone, with NVidia GeForce Go 7400 and Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 hybrid graphics. It’s currently running Windows 7, and if you had the patience, you could install Windows 10, but I don’t think I’ll be going down that route. I may well sell it to an enthusiast, if I can find one.
HP Pavilion DV6 (2010)
Another museum piece, but this time a little more powerful with an Intel Core i3 M330 CPU and a whopping 4GB of RAM. Just for a laugh, I installed Windows 10 and it runs just fine, albeit a tad slow running from a 500GB spinner. As an experiment, I slotted a SATA SSD into it, and the difference was very noticeable. It’s also running very hot, with HWMonitor showing 82 °C on the CPU, so I may well check that out and see if I can improve it with some fresh thermal paste. However, that’s a considerable strip down which involves removing the motherboard, so I’ll have to consider whether it’s worth the trouble of several hours’ work. Again, in its day, this machine was top of the range with all the bells and whistles. It has the usual signs of wear and tear, but no significant damage.
Laptops vs Desktops
If these had been desktops, my work would have been so much simpler. Laptops have thousands of tiny components packed into them, not to mention the delicate ribbon cables and connectors. Some laptops have memory and SSDs/eMMCs soldered to their motherboards, as I outlined in How I Rescued A Laptop With Windows To Go, which perfectly illustrates some cheap and nasty cost-cutting with 4 GB of RAM being considered by many manufacturers as suitable for modern operating systems. Duh!
If laptops are dropped, a chain reaction occurs – a hinge may come apart, thus causing the screen to crack, etc, etc – and it ends up as an odyssey of fault finding. A desktop, on the other hand, is a different beast and much simpler to repair. I now have to consider whether to spend any time fixing or upgrading the usable laptops, or possibly disassemble one or two simply for the learning process. Or I may just flog the lot for spares.
What do you think?
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