Yellow Light of Death

After 3 years of active use, my Playstation 3 (PS3) died this month.  It served me well, yet I could not accept that a $500 Sony device would not outlast the span of its product lifecycle.  A visit to the Sony store revealed a defect in the PS3, known as 'the yellow light of death.'  Essentially, the system will no longer power up and provides this feedback in the form of a small glaring yellow light.  As the system was off warranty, I began to weigh my options, from repair to replacement.  Granted, the price of a new PS3 has come down considerably since its release date in 2006, but I wanted to explore the repair option and challenge the notion that in North America, it is cheaper to replace technology than repair it.  A representative at the Sony store in Market Mall advocated for the former, stating it would cost $100 for Sony to look at the unit plus $70 per hour to fix, in addition to parts.  Recognizing the bias of a sales rep hired to sell Sony's products, I decided to seek out a more non-biased opinion.  I turned to Kijiji.ca and found a local service company that could fix the problem for $70, far less than the $249.99 price point for a new console.  This Calgary company fixed the problem in a matter of hours at a fraction of the replacement cost.  Now, I wonder if I might have gone another route and tried to fix it myself.  The 'do-it-yourself' mantra for home improvement is nothing new, but I perceived the intricacies of electronics manufacturing to be prohibitive for the laymen.  A quick Google search provided a host of 'how-to' websites and videos to guide this process (see the Youtube video above and website http://ylodfixrepair.com/ps3-yellow-light-of-death-fix).  Blogs have also surfaced addressing the problem, such as http://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/24/yellow-light-of-death-repair-kit/.  I found it refreshing to find I was not alone in my search for information.  I think a few years ago, I would have been very tempted to feed into the corporate conditioning of replacement before repair, however, this experience has taught me to look outside the box, either by leveraging local expertise or by accessing an online collective.