DIY toolkit for home computing

[smo]

I've been searching high and low for something like this to do my own computer/laptop tinkering. Turned out they are harder to find than hen's teeth. Mind you I'm in Bangkok, and been making the rounds to Fortune, assorted IT floors and yesterday, as the last lap, the tools market in Klong Thom. Nope, nowhere to be found. This is the picture of what I'm looking for taken from eBay. Why is it so hard to find, my Thai friend says because Thais are not that into tinkering....
Any suggestions of further places to look for, if not then I guess I'd have to get it on-line,
Thank you much in advance.

Edited October 18, 2018 by smo

[Peterw42]

Lots of that sort of stuff on Lazada. I had a computer repair shop for years, besides spare parts, my entire toolkit was 2-3 Phillips head screw drivers,  and 2-3 usb sticks with software. 

 

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/45-1-i165771632-s202832895.html?spm=a2o4m.searchlist.list.41.1dea3fa6Jl3kID&search=1

Edited October 18, 2018 by Peterw42

[robblok]

13 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Lots of that sort of stuff on Lazada. I had a computer repair shop for years, besides spare parts, my entire toolkit was 2-3 Phillips head screw drivers,  and 2-3 usb sticks with software. 

 

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/45-1-i165771632-s202832895.html?spm=a2o4m.searchlist.list.41.1dea3fa6Jl3kID&search=1

Yes I don't get it for normal computers a Phillips screwdriver is almost enough. Maybe its different for laptops.

[Peterw42]

7 minutes ago, robblok said:

Yes I don't get it for normal computers a Phillips screwdriver is almost enough. Maybe its different for laptops.

Even more so for laptops as you cannot plug in/out possessors or video etc, its all hard wired/soldered.

[robblok]

4 minutes ago, Peterw42 said:

Even more so for laptops as you cannot plug in/out possessors or video etc, its all hard wired/soldered.

Like you i repaired and sold computers but never laptops.. so no experience with those. 

[mtls2005]

14 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Lots of that sort of stuff on Lazada.

 

+1.

 

COD, order today, comes tomorrow. Easy peasy.

 

 

[maxpower]

2 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

Even more so for laptops as you cannot plug in/out possessors or video etc, its all hard wired/soldered.

Many laptops have CPU sockets and some will allow upgrade. Graphics are mostly on board chip-sets but there are exceptions that use a card dock.

[smo]

10 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

On 10/18/2018 at 7:25 PM, Peterw42 said:

Lots of that sort of stuff on Lazada.

 

+1.

 

COD, order today, comes tomorrow. Easy peasy.

 

Okay, that's the way to go it seems (I'm ashamed to admit that I have never bought anything on line in Thailand. So the time is now.) Thank you all for the link and it looks like they sell exactly the same product as those featured on ebay, plus offering the benefits of COD, next day delivery, etc.

 

Anyway, FYI, working on laptops is certainly different than on desktops, due to miniaturization of the parts. Imagine the dentist using a regular pair of pliers to pull out your wisdom tooth, that's just won't do. Also contrary to popular belief, not everything is soldered/hardwired onto their motherboard, though that seems to be the current trend toward competing with the macbooks of the world in regards to thinness/light weight.

 

However there was a time not long ago, laptops were built to last - "like a tank" - and everything was upgradable from the keyboard to the CPU and anything in between (screen, GPU, you name it.) Remember the muscle cars built in the 60's/70's? During my trip back home a couple of years back, I stumbled onto the geek crowd's hobby of restoration/optimization of these muscle laptops (so called "desktop replacement" that you can "easily" carry from the living room to the front porch, providing their battery lasts long enough;-) and enjoying benchmarking them head to head against the latest and sveltess machines of today.

Edited October 19, 2018 by smo

[NanLaew]

On 10/19/2018 at 2:41 AM, Peterw42 said:

Even more so for laptops as you cannot plug in/out possessors or video etc, its all hard wired/soldered.

Mostly true of low-cost, low-end laptops but there's still a degree of upgrade-ability on higher spec models. I recently swapped up from an i5 to an i7 cpu on my 6 year old ASUS laptop. New battery, SSD, maxed out the RAM and got a new keyboard and bezel for about $35 on eBay so it's not too shabby in performance and looks.

[NanLaew]

21 hours ago, smo said:

However there was a time not long ago, laptops were built to last - "like a tank" - and everything was upgradable from the keyboard to the CPU and anything in between (screen, GPU, you name it.) Remember the muscle cars built in the 60's/70's? During my trip back home a couple of years back, I stumbled onto the geek crowd's hobby of restoration/optimization of these muscle laptops (so called "desktop replacement" that you can "easily" carry from the living room to the front porch, providing their battery lasts long enough;-) and enjoying benchmarking them head to head against the latest and sveltess machines of today.

I know exactly where you're coming from. I bought a top-line ASUS laptop around 2006/7 and a few months later, they spun out the same model with modular everything so I had to have it. Bought all the add-ons and upgrades before heading off to work and lugged both of them around for a while (caused havoc with Customs in Brazil!) as I did upgrades and migrated stuff from one to the other. I still have them somewhere and the last hurrah as making one of them dual-boot with Linux. But as you mentioned, the battery technology back then meant that you pretty much had to have a powerpoint nearby if using them flat-out. The boot time was (still is) horrendous but then again, life all seemed much slower back then too.