Hit 500 repairs on my bench this week - never thought I'd get here

I just passed 500 computer repairs logged in my shop spreadsheet. Started keeping track maybe 4 years ago when I was just fixing stuff for friends. Never expected to hit that number, especially since I work out of my garage part time. What surprised me is that probably 300 of those were just faulty hard drives or bad RAM sticks. Most of the rest were people clicking on shady links or ignoring updates. Has anyone else tracked their numbers and found a pattern like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

anna_hill1mo agoMost Upvoted

Gotta respectfully disagree with you here. I think you're oversimplifying what people actually mess up. A ton of the repairs I see are hardware failures that aren't just bad drives or RAM - stuff like swollen batteries, busted charging ports, or straight up water damage from people spilling coffee. The update thing is real though, that's like a solid 30% of my jobs. But calling 300 out of 500 just "shady links and bad parts" kinda misses how creative people get with breaking their own gear.

jade31mo ago

Gotta say, I used to roll my eyes at people bringing in laptops with coffee stains, thinking "just don't drink near it." But then I saw a friend's kid ruin a Chromebook with a single splash of orange juice (like, somehow it got inside the keyboard and fried the whole motherboard). That changed my mind real fast. You're right, people get creative in ways you just can't predict, and hardware damage from everyday stuff is way more common than I ever gave it credit for.