The Gabriel Effect

SkyEye

My lackadaisical attitude towards electronics has yielded another casualty. My laptop fell (height ~2.5 ft onto a pair of jeans, slamming shut on impact apparently), and now the screen is plagued by a mark of my ineptitude.

It's not a scratch; as far as I can tell the "skin" hasn't been broken, but the bruise still smarts. The black mark is obvious, but there's also a pixel-thin white vertical line running across the screen. I wanna know what exactly I did to it, and how much is it going to cost to get it fixed.

proXimity

You cracked the glass of the screen, and the pixels around it are dead and dying. That spot may very well continue to grow, there's no going back now. I did the same thing to my laptop's screen, i ended up spending a couple hundred bucks to replace it myself. (would have been quite a bit more sending it off)

tofu

Yep, the screen is broken, you'll have to replace it.

L|ama

Be careful when holding it to ensure that the blackness does not spread to you, it's a very real danger.

Heh heh there was certainly a normal force when it hit the ground *snort, push glasses up nose*


seriously though yeah the screen's screwed and you'll need a new one

Newton

You broke the glass, but the polarizer is still there. That's the "skin" that you were talking about. As long as you don't put a lot of pressure in that area, you aren't likely to make it any worse. You can still get good use out of that for a long time if you don't have the funds to fix it.

Fixing it yourself is definitely a good option and will save you a lot of money. A new display is going to run you about $200-300. Try doing a search for your particular model to see if you can find instructions for replacing yours. Some manufacturers like to use adhesives and/or snap features in their assemblies which can make disassembly and replacement more difficult if you haven't done it before.