stalker2150
2.20.04, 1:25 pm
This guy got a laptop from someone who was about to throw it away.
He asked me to fix it up so that he can use it for internet.
Well, I found out the hdd was blank, wiped, and not formatted. The laptop's a PII 400Mhz IBM Thinkpad 600E 2645, the one's that have the infamous crapper battery problems. Turns out this one is not different, plus the cmos battery is weak, so every once in a while booting up it needs to have the date/time set again.
To cut it short. I left the hardware problems alone, since I'm not too excited about working on a complicated laptop.
What I do want to know is I am charging $140 for the following work done, about 12 hours of fiddling with it:
1. Figure out what's screwed exactly. It kept asking for date and time when booted , and would reboot with errors 173, 163. I found out its the low cmos battery, and when powered off and unplugged, the laptop's date/time neede to be entered again. No OS and blank hdd w/o formatting of any kind (previous owner may have done that).
2. Partition and Format the hdd.
3. Install Win 98 og'.
4. Set it up to work right with his system (the first time stuff).
5. Go through the trouble of trying to install drivers for all the useless gyzmos using just the included Win98 CD drivers.
6. Wise up and DOWNLOAD all the gyzmos' drivers from IBMs website.
7. Install the drivers, and correct the annoying resource conflicts (stupid IRQs) caused by the 10 or so useless things in there (Infrared port, then like 6 different sound card objects, retarded Digitial Signal Processor and it's children Modem drivers)
8. Get annoyed some more when ever I unplug the computer and the date time resets...... takes 3 boots to get to Windoze whenever it does that.
9. Be "generous" enough to find a Win98 SE and upgrade to that.
10. Wait patiently for the the guy to "git the money."
Of course, keep in mind that I did NOT install new laptop batteries (about $80 a piece I think) OR the cmos battery, since it's workable without that if kept plugged in ac outlet.
SO after doing all that, do you think I'm charging him too much, too less? He told me that someone else offered to fix the thing for about $300. Of course that might include the battery stuff too.
He asked me to fix it up so that he can use it for internet.
Well, I found out the hdd was blank, wiped, and not formatted. The laptop's a PII 400Mhz IBM Thinkpad 600E 2645, the one's that have the infamous crapper battery problems. Turns out this one is not different, plus the cmos battery is weak, so every once in a while booting up it needs to have the date/time set again.
To cut it short. I left the hardware problems alone, since I'm not too excited about working on a complicated laptop.
What I do want to know is I am charging $140 for the following work done, about 12 hours of fiddling with it:
1. Figure out what's screwed exactly. It kept asking for date and time when booted , and would reboot with errors 173, 163. I found out its the low cmos battery, and when powered off and unplugged, the laptop's date/time neede to be entered again. No OS and blank hdd w/o formatting of any kind (previous owner may have done that).
2. Partition and Format the hdd.
3. Install Win 98 og'.
4. Set it up to work right with his system (the first time stuff).
5. Go through the trouble of trying to install drivers for all the useless gyzmos using just the included Win98 CD drivers.
6. Wise up and DOWNLOAD all the gyzmos' drivers from IBMs website.
7. Install the drivers, and correct the annoying resource conflicts (stupid IRQs) caused by the 10 or so useless things in there (Infrared port, then like 6 different sound card objects, retarded Digitial Signal Processor and it's children Modem drivers)
8. Get annoyed some more when ever I unplug the computer and the date time resets...... takes 3 boots to get to Windoze whenever it does that.
9. Be "generous" enough to find a Win98 SE and upgrade to that.
10. Wait patiently for the the guy to "git the money."
Of course, keep in mind that I did NOT install new laptop batteries (about $80 a piece I think) OR the cmos battery, since it's workable without that if kept plugged in ac outlet.
SO after doing all that, do you think I'm charging him too much, too less? He told me that someone else offered to fix the thing for about $300. Of course that might include the battery stuff too.