How much is a busted laptop worth?

Tarantio

(this may go better in the technology forum, but I didn't think so)

Recently my big honking dell laptop started acting funny. Vertical bars, an inch an a quarter wide, at the leftmost edge and center of the screen, in which certain colors flicker to white, and an identical bar to the right of each of those with about half the severity, depending on what color is being shown in the bar to the left. I have no idea how common this problem is, or if anyone at all will be able to comprehend my description, but that's the best I can do without taking a picture.

The problem is the actual screen, and it would cost about $350 to fix it, rather heavily discounted. I suspect that their out of warrantee repair service is a bit of a scam, but I couldn't find anyone else that could fix it. Instead of paying for that, I decided to replace it with a computer with better specs for about twice the repair cost. I could just use the thing as an external harddrive, or donate it to charity or something, but first I would want to know if it would be worth anything.

It's a three year old inspiron 9300 with a 1.86GHz processor, 1GB ram, 70GB harddrive, with windows xp installed. The 16 inch screen leaves things ledgible, but probably wouldn't be very useful for picture-intensive use.

wunderbar

honestly, it's not gonna be worth much even if the screen was good. You might get lucky and someone will want a part or two out of it, but you're probably not going to be selling that machine.

Tarantio

Alrighty, that makes enough sense to me. I'll figure out something to do with it.

Beazle

You can replace the screen with one off of Ebay for under $200.

Djeet

The screen is the single most valuable piece if you were breaking it down for parts, the fact that it's busted means the chassis is not worth much except to someone who's going to repair it or part it out. Assuming everything else is in perfect shape both functionally and aesthetically (unlikely), you've got maybe $100-200 in parts there. To get the high end of that you'd need to properly disassemble and sell the parts individually in multiple transactions.

You can buy an equivalent off ebay for $250-350.

Your best bet might be to donate to friend/family who's in need of a laptop.

DiscoZombie

in a tangentially related anecdote, recently I forgot to put my parking brake on in the parking lot at work. someone came upstairs and asked whether anyone owned a Scion. I went out to check on my car, to find that it had rolled a good 10 feet, and what did they use to stop it from rolling any further? 2 laptops under the tires. so yeah, old laptops are good for doorstops, paperweights, and tire wedges.

Tarantio

It's in pretty good shape, otherwise. It's not very clean, the keyboard has some shiny spots from wear, and the corners aren't as white as they once were.

One thing that might improve the value significantly is that the battery was just replaced- it literally came in the mail yesterday. This is primarily because I left the non-functioning battery outside of the computer for months, as opposed to sending it for the recall, due to crippling laziness.

Caelum Militis

How sure are you that the monitor itself is the problem? Dell laptops are notorious for having loose connectors, including the connector for the monitor, which can cause problems as you've described.

If you're comfortable doing a bit of work on the laptop, use http://support.dell.com to find the technical manual for your laptop, and see how hard it is to get to the ribbon cable that connects monitor to mobo. Disconnect said ribbon cable, and reseat it, and it could solve your problem (if you go this route, be -very- careful with the monitor's ribbon cable. They're delicate).

This may be harder then it's worth with an Inspiron 9300, but the Latitude series were really easy to perform this operation.

Tarantio

Caelum Militis wrote: »

How sure are you that the monitor itself is the problem? Dell laptops are notorious for having loose connectors, including the connector for the monitor, which can cause problems as you've described.

If you're comfortable doing a bit of work on the laptop, use http://support.dell.com to find the technical manual for your laptop, and see how hard it is to get to the ribbon cable that connects monitor to mobo. Disconnect said ribbon cable, and reseat it, and it could solve your problem (if you go this route, be -very- careful with the monitor's ribbon cable. They're delicate).

This may be harder then it's worth with an Inspiron 9300, but the Latitude series were really easy to perform this operation.

It could be the connection, from what I know- I just know it's not a software or motherboard issue, as another monitor, when hooked up to the connector in the back, works just fine.

I don't know whether this points to any particular cause, but the bar in the middle of the screen showed up maybe two months after the leftmost bar. It's also worthy of note that this second bar has its leftmost edge in the exact center of the screen. If the data on the ribbon is sent with two halves of the screen on top of one another, a loose ribbon could certainly be the cause of this.

The only semi-relevant experience I have with this is some electronics classes in college last year, but I have some friends/family who have built their own machines, so maybe I'll give it a try, and I'll definitely give it a look. Thanks.