It's all right to be a bit frightened -- it just means that you have good self-preservation instincts. But even if you don't think you could fix these things, I'm sure that you could. And an AIO compact is a great vehicle for learning how to troubleshoot and repair simple problems. You don't need any special or expensive tools in most cases -- aside from the longggg Torx driver needed to open them up. A cheapo soldering iron will go a long ways toward repairing the most commonly encountered problems.

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I don't know, I'm just not an open-it-up kind of person when it comes to Macs and the like - I would only open something up if there was a good chance that I could fix it and no chance of making it worse by opening it. Neither of those are true, given that I'm not a hardware guy! Usually you would need a replacement part that I wouldn't have lying around anyway, as well as knowledge of soldering etc to fit it, which I could never do. Like with the Duo 230, I would only make it worse by opening it up and probably couldn't even get it to go back together (and don't have these weird "Torx" screwdrivers that you seem to need for the screws on these things anyway), and don't have any parts for them, so I will probably just leave it languishing in a drawer somewhere, dead

I'll leave the hardcore Mac-opening that I'm always hearing tales of to you guys!