Once upon a time, ( actually a couple of months ago), I made a post about replacing my motherboard on my laptop. I thought that was cool just by itself… But since then, my useful warranty has replaced 4 different parts! This doesn’t necessarily mean that Dell parts are junk… it just means that I have found legitimate reasons to replace hardware in this laptop. Story of my warranty follows…

When I bought my laptop through the University two years ago, I had no option to reduce the 3-year warranty. While I don’t have complete care (do anything to your laptop and they’ll replace it), I have found this warranty to be extremely useful.

I already posted about the motherboard, and how much that replaced inside my computer. That same week, I mentioned my CD drive was making strange noises. Now… it was working just fine, but sometimes it took forever to spin up and read data. It was also missing a couple clips on the front, so the front panel had a tendency to come off… not something that would be replaced by my warranty. But when it started acting up, Tom, my nice neighbor who works at AIT service, went ahead and ordered me a new drive. Sweet.

Sometime on the LA tour… my AC adapter started acting up… Surprising that it lasted this long, I guess, because I’m always throwing it carelessly into my backpack. Somehow it got replaced with a higher-power one… which led to a two-week fight when I thought the higher-power adapter was affecting my battery. My battery life had gone from about 2 hours to 45 minutes. Unfotunately, batteries are only warrantied for a year, so I was told “tough luck.” Eventually, I got a new lower-power (and lighter!) AC adapter, and my battery life is back up to around 90 minutes (providing I don’t play some CPU-intensive game which kicks on my fan and sucks up my battery life.)

Move ahead to spring break. I had used my laptop on and off regularly… suddenly, near the end of break, I pull it out of my bag and see my battery go flying across the room. The clip that holds the battery in had finally broken. (I used to have a loose screw in the center of my laptop that made the battery come out on a regular basis). Thinking it was just a matter of a little plastic clip, I wasn’t expecting too much. Then when Tom took a look at my computer when I got back, he said the actual rail inside the case where the clip rests was broken…. solution… brand new case-bottom! Again, this has multiple benefits! I was missing a couple of the rubber pads from the bottom of the laptop…. new case bottom = new pads! I also got a new WindowsXP sticker with a new key on the new case…. Um… I didn’t know windows licenses came with case bottoms, but I do have two valid Dell keys now… Granted, it will only work with a Dell… and with my dell CD… and this is my only Dell, but still…

Now for the pinnacle replacement (so far!). My screen has always had a nice deep scratch from my spacebar. Someone once suggested putting a piece of paper before I close the lid to prevent such scratches, but after a week or two I had given up. Two years later, there’s a nice imprint of the bottom rows of my keyboard on my screen. Cosmetic damage isn’t covered by the standard warranty…. however…. just this week, playing my uber-cool Hitchhiker’s Guide text adventure (blue screen background) I noticed a row of fluxuating pixes on the right side of the screen. Consult Tom… “Yeah, it looks like your display is going bad.” A fresh, new LCD display, which usually costs something like $1000, was installed on my laptop last Friday, completely free of charge. It’s so smooth and shiny… I’m definitly keeping the paper in there from now on.

Add all this to the memory I’ve put into the machine and, except for the processor, hard drive, and battery. I have pretty much a brand new machine! Batteries are expensive, but I think I might reward myself with a new one now that I have an almost-new laptop. So remember…. deny your warranties carefully… they could come in pretty handy!