Faulty trackpad/keyboard repair cost

[DragonJade]

I have the opportunity to buy a second hand late 2010 MBA really cheaply, but has a trackpad and keyboard that don't work. Externally plugged in ones work fine. I'm guessing that no amount of SMC and PRAM resetting is going to help, otherwise he wouldn't be selling it. It's running Mavericks so the latest OS doesn't fix the problem.

If I took it into Apple, how much would it cost to repair? Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Macman45]

This will give you an idea if you want to do it yourself....:

http://www.aliexpress.com/price/macbook-trackpad-replacement-price.html


I reckon you can double it if Apple do it themselves.

 

[macproredux]

I'd ask why they don't work

 

[DragonJade]

According to the seller:

"The issue start intermittently where sometimes the kb/trackpad works and then suddenly stopped. After a while the both stopped completely and couldn't get it to work again."

He says there's no water damage, so that's not the problem. Someone on the internet with the same problem said, "I had chipset failure on the motherboard. It's been changed and solved my problem. It works just fine so far..."

For other machines, but with the same problem, people have suggested that it could be a flex cable problem, or a dodgy battery.

 

[macproredux]

Yes it could be a few things only one of which would be fixed by replacing the keyboard and track pad. If the MBA is the same as the MBP tge track pad and keyboard do not share a cable so I would want to know why the both stopped at roughly the same time. Don't take this as me telling you not to get it just keep in mind throwing parts at problems tends to get expensive

 

[cyber16]

The trackpad and keyboard DOES share the same cable.
I would change out ONLY the trackpad first since the keyboard controller chip is mounted on the underside of the trackpad on a pcb

You may get lucky and only need to
Open her up and first reseat both ends of the ribbon cable, one end attaches to the logicboard the other to the trackpad.

I wager you may find that the pcb board may look burnt, it only take a very small amount of liquid to get in around the edges of the trackpad.