laptops that break down

[Skeithex]

What do you think of laptops that don't even last a year. Tried helping a couple tonight that was a bit irked that their cheap $400 dell didn't last them a year that their OS would no longer load.

[froggyboy604]

I think one of the reasons laptops don't last long is because some of the workers who put together the laptops maybe poorly trained and overworked, so the chances for making mistakes while assembling the laptop is higher. The factory may also not be doing enough to prevent static electricity from damaging parts like RAM, and SSDs.

[Skeithex]

Didn't look like any static damage, I wonder if maybe some kind of bad BIOs by dell?

[froggyboy604]

It can be very difficult to see static damage, or power surges from the power charger.

If they use a laptop in places with salty air like a kitchen with a lot of salt in the air, the salty air can rust their metal computer parts like wires, and motherboard parts. Moisture/steam in the air can also cause metal parts like wires to rust if the moisture enters the laptop through the cooling fans.

Accidentally installing the wrong bios version may break computers as well. Some of those system utility programs which come from Dell may also notify users to install the latest BIOS, firmware, and drivers. But, the system utilities may download and install the wrong version of the BIOS which is made for another motherboard. If the laptop freezes while installing a new BIOS, the whole motherboard maybe broken if there is no backup bios chip to use when the original BIOS breaks.

There is a possibility that their laptop got infected by a virus/malware which modify or delete the BIOS, and drive firmware, the Master Boot file on the hard drive, and motherboard which broke the computer's storage drive software and firmware.

[Skeithex]

always possible to download something rather nasty.

[froggyboy604]

Some USB flash drives sometimes have viruses and malware on them, so downloading files from the internet is not always needed to infect a computer with a bad virus. There is always a chance a misbehaving factory worker from a USB flash drive factory or computer store staff decides to secretly load up viruses, and malware onto USB drives, and have a script on the drive to copy the virus to the Windows startup folder, and the virus is set to infect your computer at a certain date like after 7 days to make it less noticeable that your computer got a virus after plugging in your new USB flash drive.

Some computer programs and hardware like Intel CPU affected by Meltdown and Spectre security problems can contain security vulnerabilities which can cause virus infections when installing infected programs with viruses.