Your Laptop Screen Just Broke, What Do You Do?

You just dropped your laptop and half the screen is black while the other half is either random colors or spider webbed out into a a random cracked screen mess, what do you do? There are a few things you can do here depending on your tech skill and/or budget.

1. Check if your laptop is under warranty. If you bought an el’ cheapo laptop from Staples or BestBuy you most likely have a 1yr warranty. Go online to your laptop hardware vendor may it be Dell, HP or Lenovo and search for Dell Warranty check or HP Warranty check. When you get to the right page they will want a serial or service tag. Enter it in and see if your laptop is under warranty. If it is, call your vendor and see if they can replace the screen portion. Serial numbers are located on the bottom of your laptop.

2. If your laptop is not under warranty and feeling techy, go online to your laptop branded refurbished market or ebay and find a new screen that fits your laptop, purchase it and follow the instructions to replace it. As a tech person, it’s not fun to replace a laptop screen so only endeavor to do this if your up for a challenge, have small screw drivers and have done something like this before. Laptop screens are about $175. For a 4 year old laptop that was $600 it may pay to just buy a new one, which brings me to my next point.

3. JUST BUY A NEW LAPTOP! Sometimes it’s just more cost efficient to buy a new laptop altogether. Forego the costly & risky installation of an after-market screen and buy a new one knowing that you’ll end up with a brand new laptop in the end.

Rekall depends on option 1 because all Rekall hardware is purchased with a 3yr warranty. But for items out of warranty, we go with option 3 more times than not, and for good reason. If you drop a laptop, perhaps something else is wrong with the device that may not be apparent now, but may come up in a few months. If so, you just spent money on IT labor to fix the laptop plus the hardware cost for a new screen and end up with a dead laptop regardless.