The question is should I have a local computer service repair business try and repair my Microsoft Surface Tablet. Well my answer comes from working as a Computer Repair Technician for the past 24 years. This also applies to the repair of any tablet. I would not suggest in having any repair shop try and repair your tablet. It will result in couple of problems. The tablet may not function properly due to the disassembling of the tablet.
When I repaired the Surface Tablets and other Tablets the first problem was removing the display. Yes you can find many different videos on youtube showing how to remove the lcd display. Most Technicians will use a heat gun to loosen the adhesive that holds in the display. The problem is there really is no way to regulate the heat. This will result in the melting or dis-forming of the plastic case.
When I did this, I tried the heat gun and it dis-formed the plastic case and the display did not fit properly. The next time I tried using a surface mount soldering tool. You could regulate the amount of heat and direct it in a smaller area. It still was not very easy and damage was possible. What I finally used was a heat pad. I would lay the tablet glass down on the heat pad. This would evenly loosen the adhesive and not melt the plastic case. I would place a guitar pick shaped removal tool and suction tool between the display and case. The display would slowly come apart.
The biggest problem was making sure the display did not crack. This seemed to happen 95% of the time no matter how careful you were. If we damaged the display, we had to replace it and they could be quite costly. If you have to replace the motherboard or other components, they would be refurbished, which means used. Many service shops will buy these parts, which are from resellers. They have marked up the price and then the service center I worked at would raise the price again. That basically not fair to the customer, so always as what the part is and what the price is before approving the repair.
The only part that generally that is new to replace is the ssd or solid state drive. So my best advise is that if you can purchase an extended warranty from Microsoft - Do It ! Do Not do an extended warranty from the repair center or you will have the same problems. The manufacturer is your best choice for repair, especially if it is warranty. I have seen too many times where the customer gets the short end of the stick, because the service center can not perform the repair properly.
Now the second thing that you as the customer should always do is back up your data. Back up your data to an external hard drive or to the cloud. You can use the back up program in the control panel to an external hard drive. I suggest to use at least a 4tb external hard drive. I also suggest turning on File History as it will also save data to your external hard drive. Do Not leave the external hard drive always connected. This is because if you get infected with a ransomware virus, all your drives will lose their data.
If you back up the data, it can be moved to a new Microsoft Tablet or any computer. The system back up can not be reinstalled on a different tablet, laptop, desktop or all in one computer. This is because it would be illegal according to the Microsoft License Agreement. Windows 10 can only be installed on the computer it came with. If a company is doing this, my advise is do not do business with them and report them to Microsoft.
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