Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

one example, some otherwise perfectly capable credit card processing equip-

ment works on a DOS level (outside of Microsoft Windows) and the machine

may not recognize the existence of a USB port or a substitute serial port that

uses the USB facility.

The other class of machines that may be worth paying for repair are those at

the high end of the market, laptops that may be just past a one-year warranty

and for which the cost of a replacement might be more than $1,000 or even

close to $2,000. If it costs you $250 to get back a machine worth $1,500, that’s

a good deal; if it costs you $250 to repair a machine that has a value of just a

few hundred dollars, you’re probably better off biting the bullet and buying a

new or refurbished machine.

Experiencing a breakdown ..................................................................

I came across Forrester and his company as I was beginning research for this

book. One of the laptops in my office — a trusted Gateway Solo 2500 SE —

gave up the ghost soon after I began writing about repairs. One morning the

LCD screen was bright and sharp; a few hours later I turned the machine on

again and the screen was a sickeningly pale white with just a ghost of an

image that would appear for a moment and then recede back into the ether.

The first thing I did was try to isolate the problem. That laptop, like many

others, has an alternate video output: It could be connected to a desktop

computer monitor or to a standard television set (a valuable facility for show-

ing pictures or presentations at a meeting). And so I connected a cable from

the Gateway to a TV and turned on the laptop. There was Windows and my

desktop; I quickly checked a few applications and the health of the hard disk

drive and then turned off the machine.

I knew that my motherboard was functioning properly and my hard drive

was okay. It was most likely that the video adapter on the motherboard was

undamaged as well; the chances that the internal LCD output would be dead

while the television output working was slim. The likely culprit: something to

do with the LCD itself. At worst, the LCD had died; with luck it was something

less, like a failed inverter or backlight.

On a laptop, the inverteris a piece of electronics that sits between the mother-

board and the LCD. Its purpose is to invert the video output. Remember that

in some ways, an LCD works in the opposite manner of a monitor. A monitor

makes a white character on the screen by illuminating a particular set of phos-

phor dots (pixels)on the screen. An LCD’s natural color is white (as enhanced

by its backlight). It makes a black character or a colored image by changing

the electrical state of one or more layers of filters. The inverter regulates the

58 Part II: Explaining What Could Possibly Go Wrong