So you wanna work on laptops…
Laptops Suck
Well, let me tell you a few things about working on laptops:
Working on laptops is slow and picky
They're small and full of different, tiny, hidden screws. Their cases are held together by tiny plastic hooks that hide inside and snap if you even look at them the wrong way. Unlike their big siblings on the desktop, it's *never* an okay idea to just use a little more force for that stuck cable or the case late that won't come away. An operation that's trivial on a desktop--like swapping out a busted network card--could easily take you a couple of hours and involve completely disassembling the laptop. And speaking of swapping out cards, that brings us to the next point...
Laptops are the opposite of standardized
Got a desktop with a broken network card? No problem. Swap it out. Power supply smoking and sparking? No problem. Swap it out. Your desktop looks like Andy Warhol attacked the color scheme? Video card problem. Swap it out. This is possible because desktops are standardized; all the components hook up in one of six or seven ways. Even motherboards are laid-out according to one of a few standard schemes that make sure all the ports, screw posts and connectors will line up from one case to another. Take everyone of these statements about desktops, and the opposite is true of laptops. Got a ThinkPad T42 with a fried motherboard? Well, unless you've got another T42 lying around, you're S.O.L. The Dell PP07L and PP08L look damned near identical; only the color of the cases is different... but their screens can't be swapped one for the other because the cables are different.
Laptops are quirky
When it comes to desktops, everything is standard and talks to everything else in standard ways. This makes working on the hardware easier. It also means it's easier to write software for that hardware, and that means--when it comes to a modern, well-supported operating system--that everything tends to "just work." Laptops? Yeah, you guessed it. Not so much. Once the manufacturer takes one step away from standards, they start taking more... they start using strange chipsets from minor manufacturers, they connect things in funny ways.
Plus there are a bunch of parts that laptops have that desktops just don't: batteries, dimmable screens, built-in speakers, a mouse that isn't a mouse. And the end result of this is that a lot less of the software "just works." And this means you will be responsible for making it work.
In short, working on laptops sucks. You still wanna do it?
A Few Questions to Get You Started
Alright, alright. Well, I'm not gonna tell you you can't. But I will tell you that to it effectively, there's a lot you need to know. Here's a short list. If you don't feel confident (BE HONEST!) with your grasp of at least half of these things, working on laptops will probably be more frustrating than rewarding. Each of these items does (or will, eventually) link through to a learning resource for that particular knowledge, so you can study up.
- What are all of the separate operations that a computer performs between the moment you hit the power button and the moment when you're welcomed to login? (cf: Education/SelfStudy/BootProcess)
- What is booting? What is being booted, and what is doing the booting? What is a boot priority list? (cf: Education/SelfStudy/BootProcess)
- What are the units used to measure speed and capacity? (cf: Education/SelfStudy/Measurements)
- Can you identify the following peripheral ports: Parallel, DB-9, USB, FireWire?, VGA, S-Video, HDMI, DVI, e-SATA, RJ-12, RJ-45, PCMCIA? (HOLY CRAP! It looks like this doesn't actually exist! Google fails!)
- What is a BIOS? What does it do? (cf: Education/SelfStudy/TheBios)
- What are 5 reasons why you might not see any picture on a laptop's screen? How would you go about figuring out which is the problem?
- What is a GPU? Why are they frequently problematic in laptops at the hardware level? At the software level? For bonus points, what recently changed in the electronics industry that made them *more* problematic?
- What are five things you can do to increase the battery life of a laptop? (cf: Education/SelfStudy/LaptopPowerConsumption)
- What's the size difference between a laptop harddrive and one from a desktop? What's outward physical difference between an IDE and a SATA harddrive? What's an SSD, and how is it different from a mechanical hard drive?
Having trouble with those questions? Good. So have I. There are a handful in that list that I couldn't answer very well myself. You don't need to know all those answers to work on laptops at FreeGeek Chicago. As a general rule, process is more important to us than product.
However, when it comes to laptops, they make us more money than any other thing we sell, and they sell as fast as we fix them. So the process of learning the finer details is important, but so is being focused on actually producing working laptops. If you want to fix them, you should be motivated to learn the answers to any question that make you better at fixing them.
That list of questions is a way to know roughly where you're starting when it comes to fixing laptops. And if learning those answers hasn't scared you off, good.
So Can I Work on Laptops, Already?
Definitely maybe. Here's the deal: If you read the caveats and questions above and you're still hot to trot--AND you've completed your 24 hours in the regular build program--come in at 11 on a Sunday and find the Laptop Coordinator. They'll probably grill you on the intro questions. Then they'll probably ask you what you feel comfortable working on. Then, if there's room, they'll put you to work and watch over your shoulder. Please feel free to ask any questions that come up, but first please try answer those questions yourself. There are two computers in the "outer" laptop room specifically available for asking questions of The Great Gazoogle.
At the end of the day, right around clean-up time, expect the laptop co-ordinator to check in with you about your day. Don't expect a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down right then and there. And don't bug people for an answer. Do expect that the laptop coordinator will want to sit down with the rest of the laptop team and hear and share observation and concerns, and that together they will decide if you're a good fit for the Laptop Team. And please don't be sore if there isn't room on the team at any given time. We have to balance everyone's desire to learn and do cool work against the need to maintain an efficient, productive working environment for fixing laptops.
Further Reading and Watching
In addition to the resources listed above with the starter questions, the links below are some good introductory guides to working on laptops.
- How Laptops Work from howstuffworks.com. A good overview of laptops and what's inside them.
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