[adverts.ie] Big market in faulty laptops?

whoami1

I was just looking on the 'Computers Wanted' section of adverts.ie and was frankly amazed at the amount of ads looking for old and/or broken laptops. What am I missing here???

yoyo

whoami1 wrote: »

I was just looking on the 'Computers Wanted' section of adverts.ie and was frankly amazed at the amount of ads looking for old and/or broken laptops. What am I missing here???

Repair companies buy em for spare parts to work with. For e.g: if laptop video card goes, screen, keyboard, RAM, CPU, Battery, Charger, Casing, Inverter etc. (you get the picture ) will be useable in another machine with a diferent failure. If someone picks up a faulty machine for say €50, a new screen off ebay alone will be likely much more, making purchasing the faulty machine cheaper for the repair guys

Nick

tommycahir

I know that for definite there is a number of charities that are looking for broken Laptops for recycling to raise funds based on the value of the metals in them so that could possibly be a source of these requests.

unkel

Also there are a good few people out there who cheaply fix the laptop and sell it on. In many cases a "broken" laptop doesn't need a new lcd panel or a new motherboard to get going again. It might very well just be that the memory needs reseating or even more likely, just a software issue. And a laptop with a broken lcd can be used with an external monitor too, so that gives you a cheap, compact, computer

HelpWithIT

Interesting topic this,

If you google ebay and look for Irish sellers who will find an awful lot of Computer Repair Companies selling spare parts, I consider myself to be a reputable business but on looking at some of these sites and knowing of stories where these same companies are telling their customers that their machines are fit for the bin and then selling these same machines on ebay makes me very suspicious. It seems to be a very lucrative business and some companies seem to be duping their customers. Previous poster made a good suggestion re donating to charity but be careful which ones. When dealing with businesses myself I donate any working pcs or laptops to an under priveleged school in Finglas and then the Principle then sends a thank you letter to the donating company.
Everyone happy (-;