I have to admit it took me about 30 minutes just to figure out where all the bloody screws were to take the thing to bits! Like I said though, i'm not a professional

Thanks for the advice kiptower. I am a 'man in the street' so to speak rather than a professional but have had fair experience of soldering having made mixing desks in a former life. You're right that for somene with more limited skills it would not be the sort of job to tackle. My thoughts were that at £225 for the professional repair she may as well buy a new laptop as hers was a couple of years old so I had nothing to loose by trying. My repair worked well and even if it only gives the thing another 6 months of life I feel it was worth it.

Well that's fair comment Andy. You are right, replacing the socket is a nightmare - how many screws do you need to hold a bloody laptop together for God's sake!! If it's a case though of £225 or £4.95 i'll give it a go as there's little to loose. The hardest thing was removing the socket from the motherboard. Replacing it with the new one was easy enough. Remembering where all the screws went....... well, I have one spare and i'm knackered if I can see where it went.

I read elsewhere on this forum that the Tech Guys don't have any official training - just relying on their own experience that they bring to the company. If that's the case i'm staggered. People with less knowledge than myself rely on these people's words as the best advice they can get. To balance this comment however, I do have to say that I did get some excellent advice about a product that I knew little about in PC World in Yeovil so can't fault the salesperson on that occasion.

I'd forgotten about the 'fixed price' repait that PC World does and agree that in some cases it would be of excellent value. I must remember that if one of my laptops ever becomes totally uneconomic to repair myself. The point I was making though, and someone highlighted it earlier, is that she was told that she can't buy the part when i'm sure it doesn't take a genius to think that it would be available somewhere. It's no wonder that they can afford to do fixed price repairs when they are charging like that for a cheap repair - DGS aren't dumb and I would imagine that the majority of repairs they get in are easily fixed with very cheap and readily available parts.

My Mum recently took her Acer laptop which she bought from PC World back for repair. Her husband had tripped over the pwer lead and the pin in the power socket had come off and was now stuck in the end of the lead. She asked it the socket could be replaced and the reply from the 'Tech Guy' was - "No, you can't get them seperately, it will need a new motherboard - cost £225 inc VAT" Mum sensibly thought that sounded very expensive so declined the offer to fix it and asked me. a 2 minute seach on Ebay found the power socket for £4.95. Now I know not everyone is capable of carrying out such a repair - luckily I am. To say that you can't buy the part seperately though and try and charge for a whole new mother board is outrageous. People who don't know any better are being ripped off by these people! OK rant over.