Today, I repaired an Apple Macbook Pro laptop computer. More specifically, I repaired its “logic board,” which is the Macbook’s main circuit board. The owner will be happy.
To effect the repair, I baked the logic board in my oven; yes, the oven in my kitchen, at my home. Seven and one-half minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit did the job. Upon reassembly, the Macbook powered right up and there were smiles all around.
What gave me such a wacky repair idea? Who bakes computer parts in the oven, anyway? People who don’t feel like throwing what was originally (when new, in 2008) a $2,500 laptop in the trash, that’s who. The Macbook’s logic board was faulty due to defective manufacturing procedures and faulty parts from NVidia, a company that supplies video components to numerous computer makers. In fact, many laptops from Dell, HP and Compaq are afflicted with the same problem as the Macbook Pro. It is a problem known industry-wide, one that has prompted many laptop makers to issue little-known recalls and warranty extensions.
Owning up to their defective manufacturing processes and parts, Apple had indeed agreed to help owners by repairing the Macbook problem for up to four years after the purchase date. Sadly, my customer’s four years had run out only days beforehand, leaving him with a very expensive paperweight.
The price for new parts from Apple is sky-high, prompting repair technicians world-wide to seek less expensive solutions. Someone discovered the “bake-it-in-the-oven” repair method and I decided to give it a try; if the repair failed, my customer would be no worse off than he was with a dead Macbook. However, to my great pleasure and enjoyment, it worked; it worked great, and my customer saved a ton of money.
The world of electronics repair, particularly the quirky world of computer repair, is marked by many oddball, “surely-that-can’t-work” ideas. Indeed, the entire development of computers themselves is based on ideas from men and women, inventors, who were willing to think outside the box.
Have I ever told you about crashed hard drives that I repaired by putting them in the freezer? Yep, sure enough, I’ve done it more than once. Granted, the “repair” in those cases was only temporary, but it lasted long enough to allow me to rescue valuable, irreplaceable files that were in danger of being lost forever. But, really, who would have thought freezing hard drives could bring them back to life? People willing to experiment, to act on a hunch, to go out on a limb.
Many computer repair technicians only know one way of doing things, and anything that deviates beyond approved and officially sanctioned methods is beyond their understanding. Sometimes, though, “normal” methods don’t get the job done. The next time your repair guy says he wants to try something “outside of the box,” just remember: there is no box.