Last week I wrote about the apparent death of my laptop. A very sad day. At the time it looked completely hopeless.

But a number of people encouraged me to try to resurrect the laptop by one of two techniques. The first involves a screen replacement. The second involves trying to find a used W350A (on eBay for example) and swapping in my hard disk.

I had not considered trying to replace the screen, because I assumed that it would cost as much as a new laptop. And the rest of the machine needs to work in order for a screen swap to have any meaning.

Step one was to decide if the machine is still alive. Last week it wouldn’t boot. This weekend I tried the easy approach: I removed the battery, the RAM and the hard disk and put them back in. Now it shows signs of life. When I plug in an external monitor, I can see the boot screen. But as soon as Vista takes control the screen goes blank. When I try the Fn+F4 keystroke, nothing happens. There is no signal to the external monitor.

However, after a couple of tries I do get it to boot into Safe Mode. In Safe Mode it displays fine on the external monitor. This leads me to believe that the machine is basically OK, and there is some kind of dialog or something popping up when I press Fn+F4 that I cannot see.

Step 2 is this question: Can a mere mortal actually replace a laptop screen? Jsauter had suggested this site in the comments (thanks!): Screentekinc.com. They do have the replacement screen I need, but at $295 it is too expensive to consider (when it was new this laptop only cost $500 or so).

However, the site has a fantastic little video that demonstrates exactly how to do the swap:

This looks pretty easy. But not for $295.

So I went back to eBay to look for a used machine, and what I found is a bunch of people selling W350A replacement screens for about $75:

W350a replacement screens on eBay

So I picked one for $72 (with free shipping) from a reputable vendor and ordered it on Saturday.

In the next episode, I will tell you how this story turns out. Does it actually cost $72 to replace a laptop screen? Stay tuned…