Disposable Laptops
I think the price range of laptops have made them disposable. Recently, I had the choice of sending an HP laptop repaired at $400 or just buy a new one for about the same price. There are many laptop models, from many vendors, at the sub-$500 dollar range. So, what would you do? Deal with customer support, send in your laptop, wait a week to have the display fixed or just go in to Best Buy and get a new one? The choice is clear, buy a new one.
This wasn’t so clear a few months ago, when I had a similar decision to make when four year old Apple laptop had problems recharging the battery. As it was out of warranty, I paid $300 dollars to send it in to have the power unit repaired and had he laptop refurbished to original manufacturing specifications. Two months later, the monitor was crapping out!