My Laptop's *Almost* dead!

cormie

Hi,
I had a thread on here about my dodgy laptop hinges before. Since then, things have gotten worse, there's now broken wires and the screen isn't displaying the proper colours (simple rewiring should do the trick because the lcd itself is perfect). So I have a laptop in dire need of repair, but everything else is pretty much perfect.

Here's the spec on the laptop:
Aspire 5021WLMi AMD Turion ML28 1.6Ghz (35W), Microsoft½ Windows½ XP
>>Home, 15.4" WXGA Acer CrystalBrite, 128MB ATI X700, 512MB (2*256),
>>100GB, DVD Dual double layer, LiIon, Gigabit Ethernet & wireless
>>802.11g , 6-in-1 card reader Ref: 1056902
>>
>>Unit Price: €1.023,87 TotalCost €1.023,87

The reasons I'm hesitant to just go and buy a new one are:
*Money!
*Everything but the shell (screen surround, hinges, touchpad buttons) is in perfect nick.
*Effort! It takes numerous hours to set up XP the way I like it (menus, icon sizes etc etc etc) and of course the fact I'd have to back up and copy all my files in various places. This will all take ages!

I also can't send it away to Acer for repair because I can't be without it for more than a few hours and the last time I sent it to them, they wiped the HD for no reason:mad:

So folks, if you were in my shoes, what would you do? I need a solution pretty fast! How much would a similar spec laptop cost these days? It's perfect for what I use it for.

Any feedback appreciated:)

Ghost Train

Is it covered under warrenty for the hinges? If it still under warrenty best to get acer to fix it for you. Might be possible to take the hard disk out and ask them just to fix the hardware. While its being fixed you could buy a second hand laptop and then sell it again when you get your laptop back.

If its not covered under warrenty, might be a good time with people getting new laptops to pick up something second hand. Although new machines arn't that much more expensive.

If you find out exactly what parts you need, you'll probably be able to find the parts on ebay, as long as its not a screen it probably won't cost too much. You'd then need to take apart the laptop and fit the parts or find somebody to do it for you

If you don't travel with the laptop, you could just use it with a regular pc monitor.

cormie

Thanks for the input. It's out of warranty I'm afraid so I'm kinda stuck.

A new laptop would be nice but I just couldn't be bothered with all the work of setting up everything the way I like it, reinstalling all the programs and everything else that you have to do.

If I could just get a bare shell it would be perfect but it's going to take a loooong time before I find one I imagine. It would have to be at a price where it's actually worth it and wouldn't just be better to get a new one and spend the time I'd be looking for a new shell, setting up a new laptop.

Where, besides Ebay, could I find a bare shell I wonder?

cormie

Would anyone know, if I managed to get the exact same model, and ghosted my HD with Norton Ghost and then put it on the new one, would everything be exactly the same? This probably wouldn't work with a different laptop because of hardware changes, right

majiktripp

You dont need the same make or model for ghosting a hard drive. You could take an image of your original HDD, copy it to say a new Dell laptop hard drive , then all you have to do is a windows repair (not a reinstall,a repair!) and this fixes the issues that changing hardware would bring up.Once the repair is done, your user account will be the same and windows will boot up as normal,you may just need to install the appropriate drivers for the hardware windows doesn't detect itself.
Have done it several times at work and its not that big a deal and leaves you with things the way you like.

For your perusal
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

majiktripp

Also is it imperative that the laptop is portable? If the screen hinges are F&*^ed then hook an external monitor up to it and use the bad boy that way.