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Scrapping my broken laptop

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I bought this laptop in 2016 when I started my consultancy. It is a Toshiba Satellite S55-C5274. It came with an i7 processor and 12 GB of RAM. My uncle help me with funds to buy it. I was in a rush of excitement and on a budget and I made a quick buy. It was not a good buy in hindsight. The speakers stopped working properly. The edge of the screen and hinge became broken. Keys stopped working and I had to use an external keyboard. The battery no longer holds charge. Years later it became extremely slow and unusable until one day it stopped working.

I did some research on youtube and came to the conclusion that I dont have the expertise or tools to fix this. It would cost money I dont have to fix. Even if I was able to fix it then something else would break and it would stop working. I gave up on this laptop and decided to take it apart and scrap it for learning and experience and curiosity. I have seen people create art by taking apart devices and framing it. I do everything on mobile phone now and I can get by. Apple or Dell or Samsung or any laptop maker, if you are reading this, maybe you can sponsor one of your latest fully speced out models. That would be greatly appreciated.

The CPU is soldered to the motherboard. The inside was not as dusty as I thought it might be for the length of time I had it. The CPU is tiny. The fan was dusty. The cooling system was very basic. The battery is removeable. The insides look cheaply made. The laptop uses Samsung branded memory. I will keep the 1 TB hard drive as backup. The laptop was easy to take apart, mostly a small phillips-head screw driver was all that was needed. What attracted me to this laptop was the high specs for the lower price. In hindsight maybe I should have gone for lower specs but better build quality and better parts. I was not thinking long term.

Nonetheless, I made many good memories with this laptop. I never named my laptop. Maybe I should give my laptop a name. My laptop was with me in Tobago as I sat outside skewers doing work. My laptop was part of my jam sessions listening to UB40 as I pretended to be a DJ. My laptop was with me when I went on a job site in deep south to setup a turnstile for a gym. I decorated the top of my laptop with stickers I got from Amazon as most coders do. Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.





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Nasif said…
Very nice, the story is a sweet one. It's a shame the build quality was lacking but it seems to have helped with your journey a lot.
August 19, 2023 at 6:11 PM
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