fooked laptop

[timwilky]

Well the daughter phoned me the other day hysterical.

She rents an attic room over in leeds. (Techically I rent it but she lives in it).

So she leaves her laptop on the desk. Wakes up in the morning to find about a pint of condensation has formed on the window and run into her laptop on the desk underneath.

It turns out that whoever did the refurbishment has plastered over the air vents.

Well she has brought it home, If I boot it in vga mode I can get an external monitor to work, so have backed off her work for the law school and her masters dissertation (asked why they were not already backed up onto the usb flash drive I had given her, but failed to get a reply). It looks like the screen is well fooked. I have had it powered up for 8 hours so far in the hope that it will dry out. Replacement screen costs seem to be in excess of a replacement laptop.

As I don't seem to be able to get my own monitor to work in anything but VGA, I have already discounted plan B which was to buy her a cheap tft screen. So it looks like back to plan A and a sever GBH of the credit card.

So anyone know a source of cheap replacement lcd screens (Sony Vaio pcg-r505dc)? (plan C)

[Baph]

I'll have a look at the screen prices I can find mate. Shame it's not a Dell in a way (ahem).

Leave it in the airing cupboard over night, then when you get it out, take it to pieces. When it's in bits, rub a crap load of epoxy cleaner (safe on the electrical contacts) over the bare metal parts, esp the screen connectors. Wipe this off gently with water and allow to dry. Might just do the trick.

Epoxy cleaner MG Chemicals cat # 8328-500ML. ;)

EDIT: Household contents insurance? Claim against the landlord/contractor who did the plaster work?

[fizzwheel]

Ooops...

When I used to work in PC repairs I used to find the price of a new screen for a latop was more than it was to buy a whole new laptop so we never used to bother repairing them as it wasnt cost effective for the customer.

Baph's idea sounds reasonable though so it might be worth a try...

[Baph]

Epoxy cleaner is very useful stuff. In this situation it doesn't always work. But it's a nice way to earn a lot of money for not a lot of work.

Imagine when you say to people "Well, I can get you a new screen, for maybe £1300*, a new laptop for around £1200*, or I can try fix it. If I can't fix it, it'll cost you labour charges of around £30, if I can fix it, you're looking at somewhere in the region of £300*, but I wont be able to tell until I open it up properly. Or if you want I can just get your data off."

Don't get me wrong, I'm no cowboy, just used to providing a service that people need/want. Supply & demand. If they want their data & nothing else, that's fine by me :)

* Numbers picked simply at random.

[james160987]

maybe a new laptop, (novatech or dell generally do cheap ones) and get a haqrd waterproof case for it to go in when not in use?

[Carsick]

Might be worth finding out what other model laptops had the same screen and finding a broken one on ebay.

[the_runt69]

Try http://www.analogic.co.uk/ they managed to get a screen for one of the blokes at work who has a "foriegn" laptop

H

[Grinch]

Well if you do you can always save the memory and hard-drive... but from all the other ideas I'm not sure what else can be done. You might fine someone will buy the shell on ebay, if its ok then it might replace someones smashed one.

[wtdafk]

ive got a sony vaio i dont use and its a bit buggerd, the keybord is broken and so it the power supply connector bits but other than that is fine, never had problems with the screen, not sure how easy it would be to take from mine and put in yours tho, gimmi a pm if ur intrested