On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 17:34, John Aldrich <jmaldr...@yahoo.com> wrote: > One of my co-workers gave me a relatively recent vintage laptop that was > non-functional. He'd previously asked me about it saying it wouldn't finish > starting up. Not having a chance to look at it, I gave him several options, > including a dead motherboard, etc. He called me up the other day and offered > it to me, on the proviso that I delete any personal data. > Well, when I got it, I pretty quickly figured out that the problem was that > the hard drive (or controller...not sure which -- can't test the HDD) was > dead. I have ordered a new hard drive and when I get that in, if that fixes > it, it will be better than new. > I almost feel like I cheated my co-worker though, as the fix would have been > pretty obvious when I looked at it if he'd brought it to me and that model > of laptop is worth almost $600 at one on-line reseller. > If you were in my shoes, would you call the co-worker and advise what you > had done and offer to sell it for parts and (generous) labor or just keep it > and have a nice laptop? >
I think you're jumping the gun a bit. If the hard drive fixes it, then I might be a bit sneaky - I'd probably let him know that I had a spare hard drive,and that when I tested it with that it came up. Then let him decide how he wants to proceed. OTOH, if simply replacing the hard drive doesn't fix it, well, I think you need to decide how much more work you want to put into it, but at that point it's pretty much yours. Kurt
