In this article we are going to go though the basics of Dell laptop monitor replacement. Since everyone is looking in our days to so the laptop repairs themselves at home, we though such an explanation would be useful for some of our readers. When it comes to Dell laptop monitor replacement, it’s difficult to explain the process for every laptop model so we have decided to focus on a specific model. Most laptop manuals explain how to take apart a laptop.  It’s sometimes better to consult the manual that came with your laptop or the ones which are available online from Dell as they are particularized for all the laptop models available on the market in this moment. We are going to go though the steps of removing the screen on a Dell Latitude laptop.

The first step when taking apart any electronic gadget is to make sure there is no electricity running though the gizmo because nobody wants to have unfortunate accidents at home. Take out the laptop’s battery and the power adapter from the unit before doing anything else. Look closely at the screen’s bezel and you will notice screws which are normally located on all the four corners of the display. Very often, these screws are hidden by rubber covers and you need to remove them with a sharp needle in order to gain access to the screws.

To remove the screws, you are going to need a Philips head screwdriver. These screws secure the plastic bezel and after they have been removed, the bezel has to be unsnapped from the rest of the lid with great caution because applying force can cause cracks or damages in the bezel. You could start from the right corner and then gently remove the bezel by going to the middle and then to the left side of the screen. There are latches made out of plastic that need to be unlocked. When the tabs are hidden, you could try and find them with a screwdriver. Just use the screwdriver between the bezel and the rest of the lid and move it around in there until you find the obstacle. Then you can press the bezel at that point and the latches should release.
After you remove the bezel, the screen will still be attached to the rest of the lid as there are some more steps which you must follow. There are four screws which need to be removed in this next step. After you’ve done that, carefully place the screen on the keyboard (put a towel between the two if you don’t want the LCD to get scratched) as there are still cables connecting the display to the back of the lid. There is a video cable which looks like a ribbon. It is used for delivering digital video signals to the display.

There is a push together connector which can be removed with a simple grasp right at the connector. Then you can pull it out carefully. Now you have to take care of the inverter connector. The inverted circuit is used to power the backlight of this Dell. The CCFL (which stands for Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) requires high voltage in order to strike plasma. This kind of tube has a better life expectancy than the usual inverter and this is why most techs are going to replace the inverter before messing around and removing the backlight.

The next step will require removing that grey metal structure which keeps securing the display to the back light assembly. There are a dozen metal tabs which are bent into the depressions of that white plastic holder. They can easily be removed with the help of a small screwdriver. Dell has taped together the units on the top and bottom. This LCD uses a translucent light panel which comes in addition to the backlight. The light panel helps spread the back light evenly so there won’t be any differences of light between different parts of the screen.

The CCFL backlight is secured in a special channel with the help of a strip of copper tape. You can use the tape again or you can replace it. When you expose the CCFL you can then pull back those rubber insulators located on the ends and unsolder it. This CCFL tube is soldered to the inverter on both ends. Removing this back light is only necessary if this is the actual problem with the LCD, it does not have to be removed if you simply want to replace the screen with a new one.

When you have removed the ribbon tape, then you can remove the LCD and ignore the other steps presented afterwards. If you want to replace the monitor and put a new one in your Dell Latitude laptop, you have to reverse the process and put the display assembly back together. Connect the video cable again and hold the LCD back in its place until you put back all the screws to put the grey metal structure back in its place.

After that, put the screen bezel back but snapping it back into those latches which you had to locate with the help of the screwdriver. When the bezel is back in its place, you have o put the 4 screws back together. Make sure you hide them again using the rubber covers which you removed in the first place. It should be easier to put the rubber covers together as you noticed that Dell did a pretty good job in putting them in there. They were really difficult to remove. Then put the battery back in the laptop or connect the power adapter and turn on the laptop to check if the new display works.

As you can see, the process is pretty simple and you don’t need any exceptional tech knowledge to remove and replace the screen by yourself. If your laptop is still in the warranty period, we recommend you take it to a special computer service as you may void the warranty if you mess around inside the laptop.

The Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop is one of the oldest Inspiron models which has been available on the market since 2004. It is considered to be a desktop replacement even if it only has a 15.4 inch display. It weighs 8.9 lbs which doesn’t exactly make it the lightest notebook on the market. Its dimensions are 14.1” x 10.8” x 2.0” which means it’s not the smallest either.

The Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop is backed up by a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor which was pretty cool back in 2004 but now, with all this Core 2 Duo technology, it can prove to be pretty useless. There is only 512 MB of RAM which means that the power of this laptop is significantly lower than that of a regular mainstream laptop today. The graphics card in an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64 MB of video memory. The hard disk capacity is 40 GB which is definitely not enough to satisfy the modern day need for storage.

Do you know how much only the first season of “One Tree Hill” occupies? I was not able to find any recent information about the price. We found some old reviews that were pricing this unit at around $1400 but we even went online on Dell’s website and could not find anything. I’m guessing they don’t make this laptop anymore. When this laptop was still available on Dell’s website, you had to choose between the 2.8 GHz, 3.0 GHz and 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 processors. There are also three different options available for the screen.

You can choose between the WXGA – with a 1280 x 800 resolution, the WSXGA – with a 1680 x 1050 resolution and the WUXGA – with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. There are 4 choices for memory: 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB. The available graphic cards are the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64 MB of video memory and the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 128 MB of video memory. There also used to be 4 different options available for the hard drive: one of 40 GB with 4,200 rotations per minute, one of 60 GB with 4.200 rotations per minute, one with 60 GB and 7,200 rotations per minute and another one with 80 GB and 4,200 rotations per minute.

It has 3 USB ports, one Ethernet port, one PC card slot, one FireWire port, a DVI-I connector, one S-Video connector, a D/Bay connector, a video connector, a module bay, two audio jacks and one microphone jack. As you can see, the selection of ports is pretty ok even for a very old laptop. Laptops today have multi format card readers and they make file transfers a lot easier. The unit reviewed came with the WXGA screen which has a resolution of 1,280 x 800 pixels. The quality of the images is not bad. The contrast and brightness levels are acceptable and the unit reviewed came with no dead pixels. In the end, 15.4 inch screen are not as good as 17 inch laptop as bigger screens are better for desktop replacement so you don’t have to stare at the screen when you are  reading documents or scrolling through web pages. The laptop is ok for basic usage and for watching movies.

The quality of the sound was better than you could imagine. Apparently there is a subwoofer included in the unit of the Inspiron 9100 which is a nice feature for 15.4 inch laptops as there aren’t many laptops out there today which have integrated subwoofers. The volume is not very loud when you turn it up all the way so for a desktop replacement it would be nice if you could use some external speakers as there is no comparison between them and the integrated speakers of a laptop. If you plan on watching a movie when you are a couple of feet away from the laptop, you will feel the need for the sound to be a little louder.

The keyboard has a total of 88 full sized keys. The keyboard is comfortable to use but the thickness may end up by bothering some people’s wrists. The key travel is great and you receive positive feedback when you type. It’s not the most comfortable keyboard which you can find on a 15.4 inch laptop. There are also some special separate buttons which help you adjust the sound volume and control some multimedia actions.

It has both a touchpad and a pointing stick, each of them having left and right mouse button so they can be controlled easier.  The laptop comes with a standard 12 cell battery which makes this laptop bulkier that it already is. You will get about 2 hours of battery life. This is ok for a desktop replacement but lower than the average of 15.4 inch laptops. Normally, a 12 cell battery should handle thing betters as it is pretty big and could provide more time of laptop usage. Remember that there are trick that help you increase the life your battery.

You could lower the brightness of the screen and turn off the wireless card. When doing basic things, like typing a document, the life of your battery usually lasts longer. The power adapter is simply huge and carrying it around increases the total weight of the laptop (as if it isn’t already heavy enough).

If you insist on owning this laptop, you could probably find a couple of dealers selling refurbished models or you could buy a used one. It has nice performance for its price but for modern day laptop activities, it most likely won’t be too satisfying. It’s nice to have 2 options for pointing devices and this is not a common feature of laptops today. The screen displays some nice images, even if we have seen better screens. Laptops have evolved a lot since 2004 so for the price you pay for this unit, you could probably get a much better one. There is no memory card reader which could turn out to be pretty useful. If you ask me, I wouldn’t buy this laptop because it’s simply too bulky and ugly.

The Dell Studio 17 laptop is one notebook which you are going to love because it’s fully customizable. It has a beautiful 17 inch glossy display which makes it an awesome desktop replacement. This Dell Studio 17 laptop is powered by a 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor T9300 and some 3 GB of RAM. The capacity of the hard drive is 320 GB and the graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 with 256 MB of video memory. It weighs 7.87 lbs which means carrying around is not going to be easy. This is why it fits perfectly into the “desktop replacement category”. The base price Is $1000 but this configured unit costs around $1600.

It looks really nice. It has nothing which makes it too glamorous or remarkable in any way but it has a solid built in construction and in the end I believe that this matters more that having a laptop which looks nice but easily get scratched or damaged. As usual, Dell offers 7 different colors for the lid: Tangerine Orange, Midnight Blue, Spring Green, Jet Black (this is the standard color – if you choose any of the other you have to pay extra), Plum Purple, Flamingo Pink and Ruby Red.

This means that you can get a color for the lid which best fits your personality. The colors are similar to those you have seen on Dell Inspiron models. If you want an even more customized unit, there is the “Graphite Gray” option with a high level of glossiness which is available in pink, red, black or blue edge trim that surround the back and sides of the display.

People who really care about design details are going to love the imprint design located on the palm rest area which resembles a map if you look at it from above.  There is no flex in the key areas which proves that this laptop is one durable unit and you can tell that from simply touching the chassis. This mean the laptop is not going to be that easily damaged if you happen to drop it off your desk.

On the bottom side, modern laptop use different panels which can grant you access to the main upgradeable components, like the RAM of hard drive. The Dell Studio 17 laptop has one big access panel on the bottom and it can be frustrating that you have to uncover all the inside part when all you really want is to simply replace the RAM chip.

There are 3 different screens available or this laptop: the WXGA+ (with 1440 x 900 pixels) which has a glossy display, the WUXGA (1920 X 1200 pixels o resolution) glossy display and the WXGA+ LED (with 1440 x 900 pixels) glossy display.

The unit reviewed had the second screen which look brilliant as colors look sharp and clear improving the overall quality of the image. The unit tested has some minor problem with uneven back light (noticeable in the upper right corner of the display) but other than that, the screen is pretty flawless.

With glossy screens there is a probability of seeing some reflections on the display which can be a bit o a problem if you will constantly use this laptop outside or in powerful lit rooms. The horizontal viewing angles are awesome and so are the vertical ones (I’m pretty sure none of you really care about the vertical angles). The keyboard is very nice and easy to type on, just like all the keyboards of big notebooks should be. There is a dedicated numerical pad which is going to make the lives of those that work with spreadsheets a lot easier. The keys have excellent travel and they offer positive feedback.

The keyboard is backed up by lights so you can see just how you’re typing in the dark. The touchpad is ok and the left and right touchpad buttons make a loud clicking sound when you press them. The touchpad is responsive and it has special scrolling areas. Thanks to the glossy texture, it’s a pleasure using the touchpad even after continuous hours of use as it does not cause that annoying frictional sensation on your fingertips.

All of the ports and connections are jammed up on the left and right side of the laptop. There are 4 USB ports, one security lock slot, one VGA port, one HDMI port, an Express Card slot, a FireWire, an 8-in-1 memory card reader, the Ethernet port and the headphones and microphone jacks. Just where the express card slot is, you can find a special remote control which is not only useful for those moments when you’re planning to watch a movie lying in bed, but also for office presentations where switching slides becomes easier.

This laptop’s speakers are good but they are not the best. They are, of course, more powerful than the speakers of a 15 inch (or smaller) laptop but compared to other 17 inch laptops, the speakers are weaker. For a desktop replacement, external speakers are always recommended as they can provide a batter sound output in bigger rooms.

When it comes to battery life, the Studio 17 did not give us any marvelous number and we also didn’t expect this to be the laptop with the revolutionary long lasting battery. If you are using Windows Vista operating system, set the power management profile to “high performance” mode, adjust the screen brightness to its maximum level and turn on the wireless card and you will get about 2 hours of battery life.

Lower the display brightness, turn off the wireless card and switch the power management profile to “power saver” and the laptop will run for about 2 hours and 40 minutes. In the end, this a great laptop for basic to mainstream use ideal for the family. A 17 inch desktop replacement is always better than a 15 inch one. The design is nice, the keyboard is great and the selection of ports and connections is at least satisfying. And, by the way, you can use the remote control to switch off the laptop without even having to get out of bed and shut down the unit.

When it comes to Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop review there is a lot to talk about this laptop which has sold so many units. Writing this Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop review is easy as there is lot of information available on this model and people prefer it as it is the ideal cheap and good laptop which can handle the average tasks.

This 15.4 inch laptop is backed up by a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 processor and 2 GB of RAM which can be upgraded to a maximum 4 GB. The dark disk may be a little too small as some people find 120 GB of storage space insufficient. The graphics card is an integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100.

The starting price for this laptop is $500 but that unit has the basic specs therefore the price of the unit reviewed is $1000. It does not look very special except for the eight colors which are available for the lid. It’s one of the reasons why people love Dell laptops, because they can find a model closer to their favorite color and this really customizes the unit. To make things even more personalized, Dell has added four patterns in addition to the eight colors and this adds a very nice touch to the laptop.  The 15.4 inch display has a matte finish.

A glossy screen could have been nice as it makes color richer and sharper but the matte screen means that there are no reflections no matter which are the light conditions. You can choose between a 15.4″ Widescreen XGA (with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels), a 15.4″ Widescreen XGA (with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels) with TrueLife (this means it has a glossy finish) and a 15.4″ “high resolution” (with a resolution of 1440 x 900 resolution) glossy widescreen display. Both the horizontal and the vertical viewing angles are great.

The keyboard is really nice. It’s all silver and it suffers from no flex. The keys have great travel and they look like small diamonds. The touchpad is integrated with the area of the palm rest. Both the horizontal and the vertical scrolling areas are marked by specific designs. The left and right touchpad buttons have great travel and are easy to click but they really make a loud clicking sound when you press them. However, the touchpad is responsive and the texture is pleasant so it won’t bother your fingertips even if you use it for a long period.

Above the display there is a series of touch sensitive multimedia control button which can come really in handy when you are watching a movie or listening to music, as it even has dedicated button to help you adjust the sound volume. These touch sensitive buttons are backed up by blue LED lights and they stay lit for a couple of seconds after you press them. The selection of ports and connections is ok for a 15.4 inch laptop. There are 4 USB ports (I have seen 17 inch laptops which have less USB ports), one Express Card slot, one memory card reader, a Kensington lock slot, an Ethernet port, a FireWire, a HDMI port, an S-Video card and headphones and microphone jacks.  The HDMI port is really nice because it makes is easier to attach an external monitor and enjoy high quality movies on a bigger screen.

The quality of the speakers is ok. This laptop does not have a built in subwoofer. The nice thing is that the speakers are located above the keyboard which means that sound is projected directly to the user. Speakers which are usually located on the bottom side of the laptop, produce muffled sound which is not very clear. We do recommend some external speakers if you plan on enjoying a good movie or listening to some loud music as these integrated speakers could not handle the job. The fans do a really good job at keeping the laptop cool but they do make some noise compared to other 15.4 inch laptop fans. If there is some background noise you won’t hear the fans. It runs with a 6 cell battery which can provide this laptop with a very good number of laptop usage.

If you have Windows Vista operating system, you can set the power management profile to “High performance”, set the brightness of the screen to the maximum level and turn the wireless card on and you can get almost 3 hours of battery life. This quite ok considering the processor which is pretty fast and powerful. As I understand, you can also go with a 9 cell battery which is usually dedicated for people that need extra battery life for their laptops, for people which are always on the go.

In conclusion, this laptop offers really good performance for a really low price so for those of you that need a laptop at home which the whole family can use, the Dell Inspiron 1525. It does not have the power nor the performance of a gaming laptop. It is thinner that its predecessor, the Dell Inspiron 1520. The battery life is ok and if you want a laptop which offers good portability, you can so with the 9 cell battery. The keyboard is nice and it feels great to type on. The touchpad surface is also smooth and it feels nice to touch it and the dedicated touch sensitive multimedia control buttons look really beautiful in the dark when they are powered by the blue LEDs.

The balance between price and performance is ok, so you can’t complain about spending too much money on a unit which is useless. If you go with the glossy LCD, it will be a fingerprint magnet and it will be difficult to use it when the light is really powerful in the room where you are working. Using the laptop outside is out of the question. There are no option for dedicated graphics but most of the options are customizable if you go to Dell’s website.

The notebooks are getting more and more popular these days and this is because they are offering many advantages. And the best of them is of course the portability. Being so small you can take a laptop with you when you are traveling, and use it to take care of all your problems, no matter if they are for work of for personal stuff. Even though a laptop is more expensive than a desktop computer with the same characteristics, it will worth to spend the extra amount of money.

There are many producers of notebooks, and here are the best companies in the world: Hewlett Packard, Acer, Asus, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Fujitsu, MSI and Apple. Today we are going to focus on just 2 of them, Dell and Toshiba. Dell is the third largest producer of computers in the world, and Toshiba is the fifth one meaning that both of the companies are in the top 5 of the world. Each of the companies is offering many families of notebooks, each one with its own models, and each model with its own characteristics and features.

Today we are going to make a comparison between two models from Dell and Toshiba and we’ll choose 2 that both have a 15.6 inch display screen and a price of around 900 dollars. So we’ll compare the two models and see which company offers the best features for this price. From Dell we’ll choose the Inspiron 15 model. This is quite a good model that is also looking nice. It is available in three different colors: black, blue or pink.

It offers good features, not just for the day to day simple activities (such as writing documents, e-mails and browsing the internet) but also for more complex ones such as playing an advanced video game or watching a movie in High Definition. As we said the display screen has 15.6 inch diagonal and you can optionally choose 9 cell battery that offers a great life of 7 hours and 15 minutes. It also has a full size keyboard with built in 10 key number and pretty good SRS Premium Sound speakers.

The model that we choose for today (the Inspiron 1564) has a price of 939 dollars and has these technical details: -  Processor – Intel®Core™ i5 – 520 M; -  operating system – Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) (this may depend on the store where you buy the laptop from); -  memory – 4 GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066 MHz; -  Graphics engine – 512 MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330; – Hard drive – 320 GB, 5400 RPM; -  Optical drive – 8 X CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD +/-R Drive); -  Other features –  15.6 ” HD WLED, high definition audio 2.0, Dell Wireless 1397,  Lithium Ion battery 6 cell, integrated 1.3 M pixel webcam.

And now let’s discuss about a model from Toshiba with the same display screen size and about the same price. We’ll choose the A 11 – S 3520 model from the Tecra A 11 family of notebooks. The laptops from this family also come with a 15.6 widescreen display and with good technical details to allow you to take care of your business and personal issues fast and safe. The display screen combined with the good graphics engine will offer you great movie or gaming experiences.

This models also has a full size keyboard with 10 numeric keys and a built in webcam, allowing you to always keep in touch with friends or family through a video conference. The price for the Toshiba Tecra A 11 – S 3520 is 999 dollars, and here are its technical details:

-         Processor – Intel® Core™ i5-430 M processor
-         operating system – Genuine Windows® XP Professional (32-bit, SP3) with Recovery Media for Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (this may depend on the store where you buy the laptop from)
-         memory – 3 GB DDR 3 1066 MHz
-         Graphics engine – Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD
-         Hard drive – 320 GB HDD ( 5400 rpm)
-         Optical drive – DVD-SuperMulti drive (+/-R double layer)
-         Other features –  LED backlit display, Mini Display port, numeric 10 key pad, EPEAT Gold Compliant, EasyGuard technology.

In this Dell vs. Toshiba battle, Dell definitely won. Not only that the Inspiron 1564 is 60 dollars cheaper, but it also offers better technical details. For example the processor is slightly better and it offers a genuine version of Windows 7 (the latest one) instead of Windows XP like the Toshiba model is offering. The hard drive and the optical drive for both models are pretty much the same, but the Dell Inspiron has 4 GB of RAM memory, while the Toshiba model has just 3 GB.

Both models have a full size keyboard and an integrated webcam, but the graphics engine from the Dell model is also a little better. And here is just one more advantage for the Dell model: it is available in three colors, not just in black like the model from Toshiba. We hope that now things are clear for you, and if you were not sure which notebook to choose between the Dell Inspiron 15 and the Toshiba Tecra A 11, you should choose the Dell. Have a nice day!