My daughter recently purchased a Sony Vaio K35 from a young man that was less than honest.
Now, she is stuck with it.

Question, what to do with it. It works, sort of.
It has 3.06ghz cpu, 2g ram, 80g hd, 15" LCD with Windows XP Pro.

When she first got it we thought the battery was the problem and bought a new one.
The battery was not the problem. A repair shop told us it was the power board.
We bought one. That was not the problem either.

What is wrong with it. Oh boy, how to explain.
It will not run without AC power. Then, after a while it tells you the battery is about dead and you need to plug in the AC adapter even though it already is. Soon after that it dies.

Any ideas on what to do with this thing?
It has to be worth someting even for parts.
The screen looks great, no dead pixels.
An 80g hd has to be worth something.
Not to mention a 3.06 cpu.
Trade for something else?
We're thinking about putting it on ebay to see what it's worth.

Comments, suggestions welcomed.
dlw

If you part it out and sell them on eBay, you will probably get most of your money back, if not make a little profit on the deal. You didn't actually say how much the guy sold it to her for.

It seems, though I have never sold one on eBay myself, that they go for a lot more parted rather than as a "For repair" type auction. For example, I often see the LCD alone for modern laptops going for $100+ each on eBay, while a complete parts laptop may only go for $80-$150, depending on the condition.

People will pay for the convenience of just getting the part they need, rather than buying a whole machine and stripping it out themselves (and getting stuck with hardware they didn't want).

You can probably get a pretty penny for that new battery too. It is brand new and sounds like it hasn't seen much use yet.

I've thought about that.
Not sure I know how to 'part' it however.

Well, at the very least you can sell the battery apart from the machine. People who are buying a parts laptop probably aren't after batteries, and people buying batteries definiately don't want a broken laptop to go along with it.

You always have the option of shipping it to the factory and letting them refurbish it. It would still be cheaper than buying a new one.

http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_sony.html

Here is a link that may help.