When It Cost Too Much Time & Money: Buy New Crap?
Posted by Cap in Even More Ramblings |
My piece-of-crap, six years old, 3.2 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P7 digital camera has finally crapped out on me.
It’s four in the morning and I’ve just spent about two hours prying the camera apart, trying to figure out why the lens will no longer extend out when the camera is powered on.
After electrocuting myself (ah… so thats why they have non-conductive film wrapped around that area) and fumbling with the gears that extended the lens, I still couldn’t figure out why the damn thing is broken. The motor’s working but the gears won’t spin — even though the teeth on the gears appears to be in working order.
There’s a guy selling two of the gears on eBay for ten bones, as these particular lines of Cyber-shots are prone to lenses being stuck in the housing due to gears breaking (a frequent solution touted by people from Googling is dropping or banging the camera against the floor — no joke).
I can buy the replacement gears and see if it’ll do the trick, but I might just be wasting additional time and money — after all, there’s no guaranteed the new gears will fix the problem.
You’ve probably been in this situation before. Your old “good enough” piece of crap that you’ve been using for years finally broke down, and you have to make the decision to either repair it or replace it. It gets especially annoying when the part is easily replaceable, but is costly due to rarity or time consuming due to the part’s location.
Now, I can easily buy another “good enough” digital camera for around $50-$80 bucks. The gears that may fix my old camera cost $10, and it’ll probably take me another hour or two to replace the gears. An hour or two of my time, believe it or not, is actually worth more than $60 — but realistically, it’s not like I’ll be using those specific hours to “work.”
Hmm… what should a cheap and lazy bastard do?
- Don’t waste time, just buy a new one. There’s plenty of sub-$100 digital cameras. (69%, 151 Votes)
- Do nothing. Your 2.0 megapixel camera on your Blackberry is good enough. (21%, 46 Votes)
- Try and fix it. Let’s not kid ourselves, you’ve got nothing better to do. (10%, 23 Votes)
Total Voters: 220
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July 9th, 2008 at 7:48 am
LOL! Such a quandry you are in! My husband took our digital camera with him to Iraq. Since you and I have the same Blackberry (only yours isn’t the pink pearl like mine is) we both have to make due with the 2.0 on our phones.
Face it- the phone camera is faster to reach for anyways- you always have your phone on you (at least I do) so when photo opportunites arise- you just whip out your little blackberry!
Why don’t you save up specifically for a new camera? Can’t be that big a deal!
July 9th, 2008 at 8:18 am
FIRST see if you can put the camera back together.
And for the money you spent on that camera you can get one much better these days.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:26 am
First try taking the old gears off and putting them back on. Then you know if you can do it (just like y’s advice). Also, taking things apart and putting them together sometimes magically makes them work.
You may also notice dust or something you can clean out or adjust while the gears are off.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:19 am
After six years you’re lucky this was the first time it failed! Even if you were able to repair it for $10 I’d worry about further damage resulting from its age and being “tinkered with.” Take one of the 25 off 100 coupons Staples sends out every other week and match it with a sale to save the aggravation ;)
July 9th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Did you check with a repair center first for a free estimate and a warranty if they repair it? Just a thought, I wouldn’t have bothered with that either.
Sounds more like the gear shaft is broken than the gears.
I’d either stick with the BB camera or buy a “new to me” one. Pawn shops / Ebay / Craigslist A camera doesn’t return cash to most of us so treat it like any other depreciating asset, buy previously owned. You too good to buy used crap? :)
Oh yeah, don’t forget to sell it for parts on ebay. Leave it disassembled so your buyer has an easier time getting to the part he needs. ;)
July 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Cheapskate- I love the idea of selling the parts on Ebay! I never would have thought of that.
Definitely going to remember that idea!
July 9th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Ah yeah, I’ve put the camera back together already after cleaning it out, checking the gears and all that — and it’s in the same previous condition (you can view pictures and all that but lens wont extend). Taking it apart didn’t take that long at all, putting the mini-gears back in the gearbox was the time consuming part.
It could be that the gear shaft in the lens assembly is broken, as mentioned… so if that’s the cause I’m definitely saying good bye to this camera.
Looks like the general consensus is just grab a new/used one for cheap, and sell this one for parts.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Option 4: Call up Sony and tell them it’s broken, what can they do? When my old Canon got completely waterlogged at the State Fair 2 years ago, I called up Canon. They said they could fix it for $x (I forget how much) or I could “upgrade” to one of a couple choices of refurbished cameras for $2x. I opted for the upgrade because it had features I wanted and I love the “new” camera!
July 9th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Oh I forgot to say that to get the upgrade I had to send in my old camera (I think they paid shipping) as a trade in. They probably fixed it and sold it, but that way I wasn’t just trashing it.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
How did you manage to capture the remnants of your broken camera? Dont sweat on lil stuff. *Grin*
July 10th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I know from selling cameras, it’s almost never worth it to fix one. So I suppose it depends on what you use the camera for and how often you use it. If you don’t take a lot of photos and the Blackberry pictures are sharp, then use that because it will always be with you. On the other hand, there are some great cameras out there for $200-$300 — Olympus even has one that’s drop-proof, freeze-proof, and water-proof; and others much have longer optical lenses then ever before on a small camera, and some have a setting to load photos right to Utube. If you use a camera a lot and you, obviously, keep them a while, I’d get something I liked because you can’t re-shoot your memories. (Oh yeah, and look at the shutter time; some cameras really take a long time to take the photo and others are very fast.)
July 10th, 2008 at 8:28 am
My husband took his camera to Iraq too. After a year in the sandbox it came back working only when it felt like it. I just got him a Nikon 8 Mega pixel for 90 simoleons at Wallyworld. No regrets, he tossed the old one.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:42 am
My approach would be to junk it, and buy a used one on eBay that’s maybe 4 or 5 megapixels, has the same or better features, and pay maybe $30 or $40.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Boys need toys. Buy a new camera on sale. You will love it.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I love you man!
July 12th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The chance of fixing your 6 yr. old low end camera is just about nil. By the way, does the $10 ebay part include shipping? That can add another $5 or so.
A shop can’t do it for you any cheaper either. Time to tear down, diagnose problem, obtain parts, reassemble, test and ship to you would be more than the camera is worth, and you would probably have to wait weeks to get it back. New cameras are relatively cheap, packed with features, do a good job, and are fun to use.
I will admit that taking something like that apart to fix it is fun and hard to resist. I’ve done it more than once. To actually make it work again would be a real coup.
My 2 cents. Good luck.
July 14th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Cheapskate,
Was your camera under warranty when you asked for a free repair estimate? I recently got my camera wet & although it works for the most part, the LCD screen is what isn’t working. I’m drying it out right now by having it in a Ziplock bag w/ one of those gel pack thingies. Something I read on the internet to try. Anyhow, mine is 2 years old, a Canon Powershot that I paid over $200 for it & really can’t replace it right now. I was just on the Canon website & because this is out of warranty they gave me an $87 estimate just to LOOK at it. Husband says it’s fine to use as is, well he’s not the one using it & who wants to go back to looking through that little box?! And not being able to preview pics you just took?? Man, those are the OLD days! LOL