Here's the situation

My friend has a Sony Laptop (specs below) This laptop will only boot Linux due to a defect with the capacitors on the motherboard (tricks the CPU into shutting down since it thinks it is overheating- Windows can't even get installed to the hard drive)

Other than that, it works great, I have Slack 10.1 running on it.

Specs
---------
P4 2.4Ghz (with CPU scaling enabled)
15 inch screen
512 meg RAM
ATI 9xxx Mobile Radeon
40gig HD
DVD/CD-RW drive
Memory stick reader integrated into laptop
2 USB, monitor out, onboard LAN and modem

She has another PC now and has no use for the Sony. She might beinterested in selling it to me?

How much you think its worth?

krfan1

Well, I just payed ~$1600 for a comparable laptop (including windows tax) so I guess it depends how 'used' it is, and how much of a problem this capacitor is going to be down the road.

Just an off-the-cuff comment here from an over-clocker. There have been a lot of problems with capacitors and the sourcing thereof by motherboard manufacturers. 99% of mobile m/boards are manufactured in Taiwan and this has been the source of the problem. This arose because the maunfacturers have been trying to cut corners to reduce price / increase profits. Many of these capacitors are originating from backyard factories in China and are therefore sub-standard. Some of the big boys like Abit have been severely hit by warranty claims in this respect and have introduced strict sourcing policies now.
Judging by the specs on this machine I would guess that it is only a year old. In terms of most trading standards this machine has a latent defect and therefore normal warranty conditions do not apply. The law in most countries is that where a manufacturer becomes aware of a design or component fault then they are obliged to repair it at their own cost and this may be approached by issuing a recall of the affected products or repairing them on a one off basis. In my opinion there is a valid case for a warranty claim on this. I would approach the manufacturer as if you were the owner and apply some pressure and see if they won't do a warranty replacement of the board.

Asking opinions for pricing is not technical, please such questions in our General forum and out of the Linux related forums please.

You can always just replace the bad caps and get it running 100% for very little effort. I've replaced blown caps on mobos at work with some from another bad board. Really it's easy to do you just use a soldering iron to heat up the points on the back of the board and out slips the cap, push in a new one and make two really simple connections and your up and running.

Well, given the possible hardware fault, that could just as easily affect the laptop and stop it running linux as well in your position, I'd offer a max of 500$ (or less if your friend likes to haggle)!

regards

John