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I've gotten multiple laptops repaired by independent repair shops which did in fact desolder, change, and solder a part. It's not actually as difficult as you

I've gotten multiple laptops repaired by independent repair shops which did in fact desolder, change, and solder a part. It's not actually as difficult as you think. The chip itself is likely just a few bucks, and it takes about an hour to make such a repair, so plenty of shops are happy charging a couple hundred dollars to do this.

wtallis 3y ago
Yes, some independent repair shops can do this. It doesn't scale. People who can diagnose such problems and solder well enough to make such repairs quickly and reliably are rare, and can usually make more money putting those skills to use elsewhere. There's no way every Apple store genius bar could have such a technician on staff.
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  It scales fine. Diagnosing and repairing these issues is not as hard as you think, and there aren't that many places that will pay, say, 40$/h for such a skill. It's also something you can train people on. The biggest problem is that you can't get the parts. That's because if you have a schematic, you can build a diagnosis flowchart from it, so all you need is to know how to use a multimeter and you can follow the flowchart. If you can't figure it out from there, you cut your losses. Then the skill remaining is to be able to hand-solder SMD components - it's not an easy skill, but there are plenty of jobs that pay worse for harder skills and not many places that will pay you well for it (if you know one, I'm all ears). You don't need to be particularly quick either. Such a repair for a really good technician might only take 20 minutes, an average one maybe 1.5 hours. At 50$/h, with a 50% success rate, you still make 150$ of expected marginal profit if you charge 300$. And of course many repairs are even easier. However most places pay around 25$/h and just ask that you have a high school diploma and some soldering experience. But the fact that you just can't buy parts means that you need to buy donor boards, and that doesn't scale well.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    > You don't need to be particularly quick either. Such a repair for a really good technician might only take 20 minutes, an average one maybe 1.5 hours. Total bullshit. It takes more than 20 minutes just to disassemble and reassemble a laptop to get the motherboard out without damaging anything. Diagnosing the failed component can be quicker in some cases (eg. scorch marks), but checking the extent of collateral damage isn't that quick. A more realistic estimate would be about two or three repairs per day, unless you want to complicate things by stipulating that all the less skilled parts of the process (disassembly, fetching replacement parts reassembly, verifying repair worked) are to be done by a less skilled technician and only the actual board inspection, probing, and rework are done by the skilled technician. And then you have to consider that such repairs will never have a perfect success rate, so you need to be able to regularly eat the cost of wasted time on failed repairs while still keeping the cost of labor and maintaining an extensive parts inventory cheaper than the cost of a new motherboard.
    - sudosysgen 3y ago
      It really doesn't take more than 20 minutes to get access to the motherboard of a MacBook. Are you under the notion that you need to fully strip down the computer before being able to diagnose it? You don't. You just pop the back cover, replace the battery with a bench power supply, and start testings. You can do most tests without removing the board from the chassis. You might eventually need to get access to the other side of the board, but again it doesn't take 20 minutes to do that. Here's a video where they remove and put back a MacBook Air motherboard in 13 minutes, on camera (https://youtu.be/Sk8kj_y32mU?si=4fUoXux_zLIGg-9B https://youtu.be/Sk8kj_y32mU?si=4fUoXux_zLIGg-9B). I already took into account a pessimistic 50% repair success rate at a salary double what most shops pay.
      - dpkonofa 3y ago
        So then the parent is right. If disassembling it took 13 minutes, then they’d have 7 minutes left to reassemble and that wouldn’t involve any actual repair.

wtallis 3y ago

Yes, some independent repair shops can do this. It doesn't scale. People who can diagnose such problems and solder well enough to make such repairs quickly and reliably are rare, and can usually make more money putting those skills to use elsewhere. There's no way every Apple store genius bar could have such a technician on staff.

sudosysgen 3y ago
It scales fine. Diagnosing and repairing these issues is not as hard as you think, and there aren't that many places that will pay, say, 40$/h for such a skill. It's also something you can train people on. The biggest problem is that you can't get the parts. That's because if you have a schematic, you can build a diagnosis flowchart from it, so all you need is to know how to use a multimeter and you can follow the flowchart. If you can't figure it out from there, you cut your losses. Then the skill remaining is to be able to hand-solder SMD components - it's not an easy skill, but there are plenty of jobs that pay worse for harder skills and not many places that will pay you well for it (if you know one, I'm all ears). You don't need to be particularly quick either. Such a repair for a really good technician might only take 20 minutes, an average one maybe 1.5 hours. At 50$/h, with a 50% success rate, you still make 150$ of expected marginal profit if you charge 300$. And of course many repairs are even easier. However most places pay around 25$/h and just ask that you have a high school diploma and some soldering experience. But the fact that you just can't buy parts means that you need to buy donor boards, and that doesn't scale well.
- wtallis 3y ago
  > You don't need to be particularly quick either. Such a repair for a really good technician might only take 20 minutes, an average one maybe 1.5 hours. Total bullshit. It takes more than 20 minutes just to disassemble and reassemble a laptop to get the motherboard out without damaging anything. Diagnosing the failed component can be quicker in some cases (eg. scorch marks), but checking the extent of collateral damage isn't that quick. A more realistic estimate would be about two or three repairs per day, unless you want to complicate things by stipulating that all the less skilled parts of the process (disassembly, fetching replacement parts reassembly, verifying repair worked) are to be done by a less skilled technician and only the actual board inspection, probing, and rework are done by the skilled technician. And then you have to consider that such repairs will never have a perfect success rate, so you need to be able to regularly eat the cost of wasted time on failed repairs while still keeping the cost of labor and maintaining an extensive parts inventory cheaper than the cost of a new motherboard.
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    It really doesn't take more than 20 minutes to get access to the motherboard of a MacBook. Are you under the notion that you need to fully strip down the computer before being able to diagnose it? You don't. You just pop the back cover, replace the battery with a bench power supply, and start testings. You can do most tests without removing the board from the chassis. You might eventually need to get access to the other side of the board, but again it doesn't take 20 minutes to do that. Here's a video where they remove and put back a MacBook Air motherboard in 13 minutes, on camera (https://youtu.be/Sk8kj_y32mU?si=4fUoXux_zLIGg-9B https://youtu.be/Sk8kj_y32mU?si=4fUoXux_zLIGg-9B). I already took into account a pessimistic 50% repair success rate at a salary double what most shops pay.
    - dpkonofa 3y ago
      So then the parent is right. If disassembling it took 13 minutes, then they’d have 7 minutes left to reassemble and that wouldn’t involve any actual repair.