I'm a firm believer that everything can be repaired cost effectively. You just have to know what you are doing, know when to give up, know how to spot a lemon and start from the right end of the problem. That is the art.
The main trick is to start with the broken item, not an item that you paid full price for and broke...
i.e. I don't mean buying a $1000 item new and when it breaks spend $200 on fixing it.
I mean buying a $100 broken item to start with and spending $200 fixing it, resulting in not spending that extra $700 on the new item in the first place.
Despite the cost of repair in cash and time, the gain usually runs in favour of your own time, satisfaction and knowledge. It also makes you less of a slave to the credit facilities which when you consider interest, results in a lot of time spend earning to pay back.
I will repair anything and everything rather than buy new.
My latest win: Sony Bravia 26EX smart OLED TV. Paid 25GBP as it was completely dead and just out of warranty. 30 mins diagnostics with a Fluke multimeter (which cost me 10GBP that I repaired) pointed to duff PSU. 30 mins on the Tektronix scope (which cost me 30GBP that I repaired) pointed to a problem with a VRM. Replaced VRM in PSU from Farnell order (12GBP incl delivery) - was a bit fiddly as it was an SMD component. Works fine now and the kids have a nice TV.
Also don't buy any old consumer junk. If you can't remove the battery it's not likely to want to be repaired (yes you Apple).
So you're some sort of electrical engineer, then. You need to factor in all the time, energy, and resources it took you to get to this point of self-sufficiency.
For me to fix a dead TV safely, I'd need a few semesters of college or a solid month of shadowing an expert, if I was just interested in TV repair alone. Or just pay you the 700 dollars to do it.
Apple decided to not make the battery bay quick swappable to exchange the space and weight cost of a battery bay for more battery. The battery is rechargeable, replacing a battery is a once 2/3 years affair for %90 of users. Replacing an apple laptop battery is pretty easy in practice. The popularity of apple devices also gives us the very well made ifixit guides:
With tech gear, I think it comes down to finding cheap parts.
I once salvaged two Xerox Star dedicated wordprocessors creating one working unit. They were ancient when I fixed it. Had never seen one before or since. But this person was still doing contract wordprocessing with it (which is so boss).
Counter example...
I dropped a coffee mug onto my Powerbook G4, breaking the motherboard (thru the 'O' key). I kept that brick for a long time, waiting for logic boards to come down in price. At no point was the repair cost lower than the replace (with the latest greatest) cost. In order for this to have worked, I'd have to horde broken and dead Powerbooks.
FWIW, re Apple products, I've repaired my iPod (HDD), iPhone (battery), and laptops (screens, touchpad, DVD). In general Apple products aren't designed to be repaired. Not like a corporate issue Dell or HP. I haven't cracked open my unibody model yet, so don't know if that's improved. But the tear downs of iPad show that it'd be trivial to repair.
I'm a firm believer that everything can be repaired cost effectively. You just have to know what you are doing, know when to give up, know how to spot a lemon and start from the right end of the problem. That is the art.
The main trick is to start with the broken item, not an item that you paid full price for and broke...
i.e. I don't mean buying a $1000 item new and when it breaks spend $200 on fixing it.
I mean buying a $100 broken item to start with and spending $200 fixing it, resulting in not spending that extra $700 on the new item in the first place.
Despite the cost of repair in cash and time, the gain usually runs in favour of your own time, satisfaction and knowledge. It also makes you less of a slave to the credit facilities which when you consider interest, results in a lot of time spend earning to pay back.
I will repair anything and everything rather than buy new.
My latest win: Sony Bravia 26EX smart OLED TV. Paid 25GBP as it was completely dead and just out of warranty. 30 mins diagnostics with a Fluke multimeter (which cost me 10GBP that I repaired) pointed to duff PSU. 30 mins on the Tektronix scope (which cost me 30GBP that I repaired) pointed to a problem with a VRM. Replaced VRM in PSU from Farnell order (12GBP incl delivery) - was a bit fiddly as it was an SMD component. Works fine now and the kids have a nice TV.
Also don't buy any old consumer junk. If you can't remove the battery it's not likely to want to be repaired (yes you Apple).