When is a computer too uneconomical to repair?

I have an older computer that has issues however I am worried about the cost to fix it. At what point is a computer not worth fixing and should just be thrown away?

Simon, Newcastle West

Hi Simon,

It really does come down to what the issue is. A computer repair will fall into one of two categories, a hardware or a software issue.

A hardware issues is where something is physically wrong with the computer. There are a large number of different types of hardware issues from blown power supplies to broken DVD drives. Of course the older the computer, the harder it is to get parts so that adds to the cost.

With a hardware issue the point it generally becomes uneconomical to fix it is when the motherboard dies. The motherboard is the device to which everything else is connected to. Once it is broken it has to be replaced and if your computer is more than a few years old finding, an exact replacement is often difficult if not impossible.

If an exact replacement can’t be found then a different model needs to be used. As the motherboard has such a central role in the computer, replacing it with a different model often introduces a wide variety of issues requiring yet more time to repair.

The only time a software issue becomes uneconomical is if the computer is really old. There is little point spending time fixing a Windows 98 computer when Windows 8 is the latest version of Windows. In this day and age anything older than Windows XP is generally not work fixing.

Without more information unfortunately we can’t give you an exact answer however if you give us a call we can often determine over the phone if it is worth fixing or not.