I’ve got this one customer who tends to be a bit rough on their hardware. It’s actually the two college aged daughters in the household that take it upon themselves to test the physical limits of laptop design. I remember a couple of years ago I repaired a couple Apple iBooks for them. One had the DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive torn out of it (this isn’t normally a user removable item), and the other had a keyboard that was trashed. The one with the busted optical drive wasn’t worth the expense of repairing, but I found a replacement keyboard on eBay for the other one and managed to get it fixed.

Fast forward to today, and I have a 12″ Powerbook that looks like it was used in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. It has a couple large dents in its aluminum case, and the LCD screen housing is coming apart. But what got the wounded laptop into my hands was the fact that it wasn’t booting up normally. Actually, it wasn’t booting up at all. I thought maybe that it had taken one too many left hooks and the drive and/or motherboard had taken some damage. But after some tinkering, I re-installed Mac OS 10.3 and had it booting up normally. In just a matter of hours, I’ll be giving it back to its owner for further torture.

This household goes through laptops like Paris Hilton goes through small furry animals. There were the two iBooks I mentioned earlier, plus I think three PowerBooks (one 12″ and two 14-inchers). Then there was the Dell Inspirion that had its Wireless PC card decapitated - clipped off with surgical accuracy as it sat innocently in the PC card slot with its antenna jutting out the side (no, it wasn’t the kind of card that has the detachable antenna). Amazingly, they all are still functioning to one degree or another. Call them the walking wounded of the laptop wars. Doing a headcount of all the PCs and Macs in the household (both living and Resting In Pieces), I think there are six or seven machines.

And when they stop functioning altogether (and beyond what I can repair), guess what? That’s right. They just buy new ones. Wish I had that kind of disposable income. My wife’s 5+ year old Compaq Presario 1200T Celeron laptop is in pristine condition. Of course, it was replaced this past summer by an iMac G5, but that’s besides the point. Her laptop lasted as long as it did because she took care of it. Accidents happen. But over and over and over?

In some small way, maybe I’m “enabling” the behavior. But if it weren’t me, some other outfit would repair the laptops. What’s really enabling the behavior is the fact that when a laptop gets busted up, there aren’t any consequences. When it can’t be repaired economically, their response is to hop in a cab to the Apple Store and get another one.

It’s sad. I hate to see technology needlessly abused like that. I suppose it’s money in my pocket to be the laptop paramedic on call - but it’s a role I’d rather not play.

[tags]computer repair,laptop paramedic,laptop abuse,disposable income[/tags]