I wonder what the average life span of a laptop is these days…? we bought my teenage son a laptop for his 16th birthday back in July 2009 and for the price of around £400 expected him to get at least two years usage out of it, but in fact it has barely last 18 months before it has given up the ghost. We are not talking about any major malfunction but rather a series of inconvenient little problems that all lumped together to render it useless.

And a teenage boy who is without his laptop is not a happy one…

First off the battery stopped holding it’s charge so you got about 20 minutes of cordless use, then the on/off button would not work and now the thing refuses to turn on at all. The question at this point is whether it is worth repairing or is it more sensible to replace it – not just ‘sensible’ but cost-effective? looking at computer reviews in various magazines do you ever see adverts for repairmen…? no don’t and there’s a good reason for that. You wouldn’t repair a DVD player these days when the costs and parts add up to twice/thrice the amount of a new machine, and you’d be crazy to put a camcorder into a technician’s workshop when it is far cheaper to buy a new one. So I guess I have answered my own question – but it’s madness when technology has seemingly become such easily throw-away commodities.