Presario won't turn on

Quite a few people are having this problem from the looks of the user groups
on Compaqs support forums.

I have a 1200-XL110 with Windows 98SE. It is about 3 yrs old. Haven't
really used it that much.

Last fall, it wouldn't boot up from either the battery or the AC power cord.
The power cord light came on but that was all that happened. Took it to
CompUSA who did the remove battery, and hold down the power button for 90
seconds trick (that I didn't know about) and charged me $140.

Next few times that it did this, that trick worked and laptop would power
up.

Now, nothing works. I have tried some of the suggestions that I read about
in the support forums but I don't know anything about opening up the laptop
so I haven't fooled with any suggestions about the CMOS battery, etc.

I saw a couple of laptop repair places on the web but I hesitate to use them
because I don't know anything about them. They offer to give an estimate
when you tell them the problem and say that they won't charge if they can't
fix the problem. Has anyone ever used any of these places?

CompUSA told me that they do not think it is worth fixing but I paid about
$1500 for it three yrs ago and some of the folks in the support forum say
that they found it to be a solder problem between the power switch and the
motherboard. They also say that Compaq/HP should do the right thing and fix
all of these dead laptops for people for a nominal fee since it seems to be
a design/engineering defect.

I don't want to pay more than $150 to have this fixed but I'm not sure that
I can get it fixed.

Has any one here heard about this as a problem for Compaq laptops? Not sure
why Compaq/HP isn't taking better care of their customers. I know that this
will be my last purchase of their brand.

Thks