Have Computer Repairs Ever Changed?

Technology has come on in leaps and bounds over the last four decades. The first personal computer (PC) appeared in the 1980's and since then it has not really changed much. It still basically consists of a keyboard, mouse, monitor and the box which contains the hardware. Although there has been a massive increase in speeds of memory chips, graphics cards, motherboards and processors, they still work pretty much the same way as they did all that time ago. Hard drive technology is only just starting to change from discs to solid sates. All this means is that PC computer repairs are still similar to the way they were made back in the eighties.

Due to the technology involved in many PC parts, it means that they often need to be replaced rather than repaired. This is because most of the technology is so small, it can only be done by machines that work at the micro level. Take LCD monitors, in the sixties and seventies TV's used to have valves and resistors that could be manually repaired, these days the parts are so small on the circuit boards that the only solution is to replace the whole monitor. As a lot of broken PC parts container rare earth elements this can be a recycled that is why they should be recycled and not just thrown in the rubbish.

When it comes to repairs of a hard drive (HD) it depends on what the damage is and how important the data is on the disk. In most HD failures, especially for many home users, the only option is to dispose of the drive. However, it should be noted that a damaged drive does not mean that the data cannot be recovered, so the disks inside should be removed and destroyed. For people or businesses that have important data on the disk, and foolishly have no backups, then they can pay for a company to try and recover the data. As long as the disks are not damaged, in a lot of cases they can recover some or all of the data.

Sometimes other bits of hardware may fail, if it's the memory, CPU, motherboard or graphics card then they will need to be replaced. Such things as a damaged cable and broken fan can be replaced cheaply. One problem these days is that a CPU may fail in a computer, and the only option is to buy a new one, but if it is an old PC then the parts are often not available. This can prove to be expensive as a more modern CPU probably means a new motherboard, and in turn new memory chips. So in short, if the computer is old and has a hardware failure then it may be cheaper just replacing the whole unit.

Computer repairs can be done to many PC's though, especially if they are only a year or two old. If a hard drive fails in an older machine then this is also easy to replace, but to be honest new computers are cheap these days, and so a complete replacement should be kept as an option instead of a repair.

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