Laptop Shop

If you are interested in purchasing a new laptop or in getting your existing laptop repaired, then you might be in need of a laptop shop. There are generally dozens of these types of small computer repair shops located in virtually any city throughout the United States. Usually they are independently owned and that is a key factor in how you should approach your business with them. If you just walk in and tell them what you want then you are going to be in for a nasty surprise when it comes time to pay the bill. These places are obviously trying to make a profit and if you know anything about the overhead of a business and the cost of labor per hour then you know that the prices in such a shop like this are going to be sky high. So you need to prepare yourself for this and devise a strategy in order to make the best use of your money when you are trying to purchase a used laptop for sale.

If you have a broken laptop then you can obviously try taking it to the shop and see if they will fix it.  Now normally computer shops like this will have a policy that almost prohibits you from doing so and is designed to get your money right of the bat and hopefully commit to a full purchase.  What they normally do is to charge a fee, usually around 20 to 50 dollars, for them to even look at your broken laptop.  They agree to look it over, determine the problem, give you an estimate on the repair, and then apply the fee you paid toward the bill if you choose to have it repaired.  If you choose to walk away at that point then you lose the fee. 

Now this can be a tough situation if we are talking about an expensive laptop, especially if you bought it fairly recently.  Of course if it was a recent purchase it might be under warranty and you could possibly get it fixed for free (check with the manufacturer!).  On the other hand the warranties usually run very short on laptops and they do not cover accidental stuff so in a lot of cases you are going to end up at the laptop repair shop anyway. 

What you really need to do at this point, if you are in this situation, is to assess for yourself the damage on your laptop and the cost of repair.  It would be nice if you could get a 500 dollar laptop fixed for about 50 dollars.  This never happens.  It will actually cost more like several hundred dollars to have any sort of work done on a machine like this.  If they are putting in manual labor, you are not going to get out of there for less than 150 bucks in most cases.  So the first thing you need to do is to take an honest look at your replacement cost for the laptop.

Now most people get mixed up here and they look at the price that they paid for their laptop.  They might complain that they paid 700 dollars about a year ago for their machine and they hate to see it get thrown in the garbage.  So they might end up paying way to much to have it fixed when in fact they should have taken a different route. 

What is the different route?  It is just this: sell your broken laptop and buy the cheapest alternative available to you.  Most people hear this solution and it leaves a bad taste in their mouth.  I can assure you though that this solution beats the laptop shop in almost every way.  Let's take a look at it.

First of all it is really, really easy to sell a broken laptop. You might not get a ton of money for it, but hey, it is broken, right? Simply list it as an auction on eBay, fully explaining exactly how it is broken in great detail, and start the bidding out at 1 cent. Make a no reserve auction and let the market decide what it is worth. Usually you will be surprised at how much you can recoup from a broken machine because the parts are quite valuable to the repair community.

If you do not have experience with eBay then you might get a friend to list it for you. Be sure to explain that you are not trying to deceive anyone and you want a detailed listing that explains how it is broken.

The next step after this is to research a new laptop purchase. You will always be surprised at how much prices have dropped since your last laptop purchase. Particularly, take a good look at netbooks and see if they could serve as a replacement. You should be able to spend around 250 dollars to get a brand new laptop as a replacement for your broken one if you really shop based on price. With the money you get from selling the broken one, you will be out of pocket much less than if you paid to have your broken laptop fixed.

Bottom line: avoid the laptop shop, as it is almost never cost effective when compared against the method I just described above. What you should do is look around for a good used laptop for sale.