I lost a small piece of my laptop a few months ago. After some research, I found out the little cord connecting my laptop to the rest of the powercord is called a DONGLE. The dongle is useful because if you trip over your cord, your laptop will not be yanked onto the floor and broken. That'd be tragic!

I wanted to buy a new dongle. I went to Best Buy and asked one of the young strapping men to help me. He told me I couldn't buy just a dongle, I'd have to buy a whole new powercord set. Eighty dollars. No. Not 80 bucks for a little Dongle. I thought maybe, just maybe, Ebay would sell dongles separately.

Drumroll!

I was right! I spent 15 dollars including shipping on a new dongle. I was quite pleased.

Replacing small parts is well worth it in the end. I can't believe my almost-five-year-old laptop is still pretty healthy.

Moral of the story: Buy replacement parts on-line. Hopefully the big-box stores will see the light and start selling parts so people can actually maintain their expensive stuff for more than two years.