A few months ago, Stephen Ironside, a student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, confronted a minor but modern tragedy: The iPod that filled his life with song stopped working.
The device was out of warranty, and Apple would not fix it free. So he left it in a drawer until he happened to read a blog posting on CrunchGear.com that described how he might fix it -- with a small, folded piece of paper. Ironside celebrated by posting thanks on the blog: "I've been on CDs for months. You saved my life (and my iPod)."
The author of the blog post, Matt Hickey of Seattle, says that using paper as a shim to put pressure on the hard drive has worked on about 70 percent of the failed iPods he has encountered -- even though he is not sure why it works.
Gadget-fixing is adapting to the modern era. Neighborhood repair shops are all but gone, and along with them the repairmen who could offer casual advice, even when that advice was whether it was worth repairing the device. But Web sites can help users find and share solutions that can save a device from the landfill. If the job is too tricky, a number of Internet-based firms offer highly specialized repairs via overnight mail.
Some sites like macfixit.com, fixmyxp.com and macosxhints.com are devoted to a single product, while others like avsforum.com sponsor debates on a big product area, in this case home theaters, televisions and stereos. People with laptops that have suddenly gone blank can turn to www.notebookforums.com or notebookreview.com, and there are even a few sites like www.highdefforum.com for fixing TVs.
Yaniv Bensadon, the chief executive of fixya.com, started his site after he moved back to Israel from the United States and found that his electronics would often malfunction in the new environment. The manuals and the support offered by the manufacturers rarely helped.
His site groups questions and answers to problems and organizes them according to product type, brand name and model number. The page for the Microsoft Xbox 360, for instance, lists more than 100 questions with answers. Most provide a single solution, but one common problem, overheating, has 81 posts debating the best fix. All but about a dozen of the questions had answers, although some were a bit brief. (Microsoft has offered to fix those overheating Xbox 360s).
"Like any other consumer out there, I had problems with my Xerox printer, Palm Treo 700, Belkin wireless router and even Sony portable DVD," Bensadon said. "On each of the problems I posted, I received a great solution within five to 10 hours."
Fixya rates the people who offer advice. Anyone can claim to be an expert on a topic, but their rating will rise or fall with the quality of their answers. The site also offers paid services from users who charge about $10 to $20 a problem.
Knowledge is only half of the battle. A number of sites specialize in providing spare parts but also provide the information on how to install them as the incentive to use the site. PDAparts.com, for instance, sells replacement screens, batteries, cases and other parts for Palm Treos, iPaqs and other PDAs. Videos describing the process of opening the cases can be downloaded.
Most other gadgets come with batteries that are easy to replace without custom tools. Companies offering replacement batteries for iPods often offer better batteries with higher capacities and longer lifetimes. Ipodjuice.com, for instance, sells a 1,200-milliamp hour battery that will replace the 600-milliamp hour battery that shipped with a fourth-generation iPod.
For those who do not want to get their hands dirty or wait for an answer, dozens of businesses specialize in fixing some of the most common problems. Ryan Arter, the president of IResQ.com, said his company has been fixing Apple products since 1994. Prices depend on the item and the damage. Replacing a screen on a fourth-generation iPod, for instance, costs $94 for parts, labor and overnight shipping in both directions.
Shannon Jean,of TechRestore.com, a competitor in Concord, Calif., says that the data on a device can be more valuable than the gadget itself. An iPod or a laptop may carry thousands of dollars worth of music and an immeasurable amount of documents, spreadsheets or other information. That defines what people will pay, he said.
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Old vs New
Deciding between repairing a gadget or replacing it with a newer, often better model is a bit of a gamble. Most sites caution that they cannot fix every problem. Some problems like a cracked screen can be easy to estimate and straightforward to repair. Random glitches and odd behavior, however, may be impossible to pinpoint, leaving the user with a bill for ineffective repairs.
Chris Adamson, an editor at O'Reilly Media in Sebastopol, Calif., offers a cautionary tale. He shipped a faulty iPod that was failing on planes to an online company, which he does not want to mention by name. It took a week for the service to diagnose the problem before suggesting replacing the hard disk for $120. The solution, however, did not address the basic problem, and he now finds himself asking for a refund, which the company does not want to give.
He recommends thinking of the devices as having a short life span, perhaps three or four years. "If it fails after that period, accept that you've gotten your value out of it and get something new," he said.
