As consumer electronics become lighter and tinier, and are assembled on the other side of the planet, we’re more inclined to replace something than to repair it. Mike’s experience takes the “ending is better than mending” phenomenon to a new level: he’d be happy to replace the unbearably loud fan on his Asus Eee PC himself, but the company doesn’t sell parts. Asus could accept the machine for repair, but no one knows how much the repair would cost, or if it’s even possible.

A while back I bought Asus eeepc 1201T. Several months ago the fan became extremely noisy (the kind of obnoxious noise that drives you insane in a matter of seconds). I attempted to clean it to no avail so I set out searching for a new fan.

It seems that this model was sold for about 5 minutes so I cannot find a fan in any of the normal places. After contacting Asus I found out they don’t sell parts for their products! They wanted me to send the computer in which I cannot as the hard drive is full of proprietary data. Furthermore, they could not even tell me how much it would cost to have them repair it.

So, I am stuck with having to buy a new computer because they will not sell me a replacement fan. This was my second Asus laptop and at this point I think it will also be my last. I hope that others can learn of this and avoid this problem in the future.

If removing the hard drive and then sending the machine in isn’t an option,

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