On an original new notepad couple of years old now I have had the inverter
replaced early last year and then near the end of last year also had the lcd
screen replaced.

Sadly it was just outside the one year warranty on first occasion.

Well the screen has gone very faint again and am about to take it back again
for repair.

Now it has a one year warranty from the repair shop for the repair but I'm
wondering when I take it back they will say its another different component
that has failed.

I would not think there is much else that can be replaced that causes a
faint blank screen apart from the above or has anybody experienced other
parts that could cause this problem ?

It's funny but I bought dell for reliability and now I'm not so sure on
there products any longer.

Thanks in advance

Sammy

sammy wrote:
> On an original new notepad couple of years old now I have had the inverter
> replaced early last year and then near the end of last year also had the lcd
> screen replaced.
>
> Sadly it was just outside the one year warranty on first occasion.
>
> Well the screen has gone very faint again and am about to take it back again
> for repair.
>
> Now it has a one year warranty from the repair shop for the repair but I'm
> wondering when I take it back they will say its another different component
> that has failed.
>
> I would not think there is much else that can be replaced that causes a
> faint blank screen apart from the above or has anybody experienced other
> parts that could cause this problem ?
>
> It's funny but I bought dell for reliability and now I'm not so sure on
> there products any longer.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Sammy
>

The inverter and CCFL are reasonably self-contained, except for one signal
coming from the motherboard. There is a PWM signal used to indicate the
intensity setting. The repair shop could blame the motherboard, for putting
out a bad PWM signal. Now, the odds of that happening, are pretty close
to zero, but they could always try that on you. It is easy for a repair
shop, to blame almost everything on your motherboard :-( They make
good money that way.

PWM "low" setting PWM "high" setting Couple
Hundred
+-+ +-+ +-+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ Hertz
| | | | | | | | | | | | logic signal
----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-+ +-+ +-+ (pulse width = level)

Odds are, it is something related to the inverter and CCFL again. You
can't really ask a repair shop for "proof", because they may not be
using test equipment at all. They'll swap stuff until it works again.

Considering the high failure rate on laptops, a hardware warranty of
longer than one year is a good idea. It doesn't take too many
"it's your motherboard" repairs, before your bank account would be
drained. If the manufacturer offers an extended hardware warranty,
it might be worth it. If laptops lasted longer, I'm not really
a fan of extended warranty (mostly snake oil), but if you know
a certain kind of product is crap, it may make sense to have
an extended warranty of some kind. The price of the warranty
may reflect just how bad the product quality is.

You should also get out your search engine, and search for
web forums and the like, discussing your E1505. To see what
repairs are frequently done on the unit. In some cases, there
may be a hidden warranty protecting certain items in the
design (like defective Nvidia GPUs). You may also get pointers
to cheaper ways to get the unit repaired, after the original
warranty is gone.

Paul