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Good job kid! Make sure to share these stories with your parents too, maybe they have friends with broken laptops and you can fix them for small fee's, make some side cash out of your hobby!
 
Good job kid! Make sure to share these stories with your parents too, maybe they have friends with broken laptops and you can fix them for small fee's, make some side cash out of your hobby!

Haha :) I appreciate the wishful thinking there... Maybe that could happen.... :)
 
Good job kid! Make sure to share these stories with your parents too, maybe they have friends with broken laptops and you can fix them for small fee's, make some side cash out of your hobby!

That NEVER works for me.
They always go to geek squad and overpay :rolleyes:

Also I guess the true computer geeks are 14-15, myself included :D
 
Yeah that seems to be the case, most of the time. It's too bad that people will overpay for work with little effort/care.

Yup this guy in his 60s paid $300 for someone to set up his Mac with everything :eek: I mean, thats $300 for half an hours work! I'd be more than happy to do the job for $10!
 
Yeah that seems to be the case, most of the time. It's too bad that people will overpay for work with little effort/care.

I suppose often they have no idea what's wrong and therefore no idea what needs to be done, so they'll pay no matter how much, just to get rid of the problem(s).
 
Yup this guy in his 60s paid $300 for someone to set up his Mac with everything :eek: I mean, thats $300 for half an hours work! I'd be more than happy to do the job for $10!

I suppose often they have no idea what's wrong and therefore no idea what needs to be done, so they'll pay no matter how much, just to get rid of the problem(s).

You gotta look at differently. They're not paying you for your time, they're paying you to solve a problem. Factory workers get paid by the hour - knowledge workers get paid to solve problems (OK - that is a gross simplification, but it makes my point).

I'm also 15. If you multiply by 3 and add a few more years.

Hats off to those of you recycling and reusing old technology.
 
Just don't let them have you service their computers for free:D
You are right. I have serviced other people's computers for free. I should not do that anymore, because it will give people the impression that I will always repair/service their computers for free.

You gotta look at (it) differently. They're not paying you for your time, they're paying you to solve a problem. Factory workers get paid by the hour - knowledge workers get paid to solve problems (OK - that is a gross simplification, but it makes my point).
That is something that needs to go into consideration, and is a very good point.

Hats off to those of you recycling and reusing old technology.

Are you referring to the fact that I reused the circa 2006 MacBook as a desktop?
 
...
Are you referring to the fact that I reused the circa 2006 MacBook as a desktop?

Sort of.... I will rephrase what I said though. "Hats off to those of you who recycle and reuse technology that would have ended up in the dump." Old or not. You seem to have knack for taking Macs that were headed for the dump, and repairing them or repurposing them.

My cousin used to do the same with BMWs. When he was a teenager he had a little business collecting old BMWs. Often people would call him and ask him to take the car away - it would have cost them more to tow it to the scrap yard then they would get selling it.

He'd basically build a car (or cars) from the parts he had available, from visiting the scrap yards, and from sheet metal and fibreglass. He'd sell the finished cars, and that helped put him through school - an industrial design school, as it happens. He was also the guy you called to get your old BMW running again.

He's still in the auto business (and still collects BMWs).
 
I hope to just use the MacBook as a secondary desktop machine, with two displays. I will be able to switch between the circa 2006 MacBook and the 2010 MacBook with the KVM switch that I have. (Until I can find a better use for it, ie lending it out to friends)
 
(cough) i would quite happily take the Aluminium Macbook off your hands for £500 posted (cough)

I would like to precede this post with the statement that I do not want to sound critical. The coffee damaged MacBook is a 2010 white unibody and my own (purchased with my own money) MacBook (Pro) is a 13" MacBook Pro. It is also a 2010 model. Neither of these are "Aluminum MacBooks." But, I do have a friend who has a collectors edition 13" Unibody Aluminum MacBook. I envy him :p
 
Yup this guy in his 60s paid $300 for someone to set up his Mac with everything :eek: I mean, thats $300 for half an hours work! I'd be more than happy to do the job for $10!

When you work for a company and/or have to pay taxes, is nowhere near as simple as this. If I charge $300 to fix someone's computer, a portion of that is going to pay for the parts, a portion will pay the people who handle ordering the parts, a portion will pay the people checking in the customers, a portion will go to the power bill, the phone bill, the water bill, the property taxes, the internet, health insurance, vacation time, and finally, a portion will go to me, the person who did the work. If instead I'm working alone, running my own company, I still have to pay taxes on everything, and we rarely bill for an actual eight hours of labor in an eight hour day. Therefore, charging $100/hour for labor doesn't even remotely come out to me making anything close to $100/hour.


Additionally, don't ever forget that you can't trust a machine that has had something spilled on it. They can do crazy weird things, and even if it works fine now, it might die next week. You don't know if you missed something, and you don't know if a chip almost fried, but just barely didn't. You can't ethically sell it to someone else as a working computer. It's the same as cars with flood damage--you should never buy one.
 
This thread has turned into a meeting-place (sort of!) for people of the 13/14/15 age range :p
 
oh yea, im 15 :p had a few mac's in my time..

My current iMac has got some weird problem atm.. i have to keep it on all the time because if i dont when i turn it on most of the time the screen wont come on.. it works fine when it does, and when the screen dont come on when i give it time to boot i can still use the volume keys to make the noises.. weird.

anyone heard of that here? :p

anyway. isnt there some sort of meeting place for us young 'uns? :p
 
Yes! someone else who uses that term :D

Lmao. I dont know anyone other than my parents who use that term.

But anyway... I am at a presentation right now, with both my MBP and the MB. The computer that the presenter brought wasn't working with the projector, so I offered to set up the MB and use let them use it for the presentation. In other words, the MacBook is working just fine, with a DVD playing for over an hour...
And also @the guy who said it is unstable.... It is not. The liquid did not touch the logic board. The only problem was that the video cable was corroded where it connects to the LCD. So, the only unstable part is the display. If the display ceases to work, I will use it as a desktop with my external display.
 
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