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Just wondering. I understand that there is a a certain number of lamp hours for all LCDs. If mine burned out one day, is there anyway to replace the LCD? If there is, what are the costs involved?

All inputs welcomed.

You are correct about the lamp life being limited on laptops. However, the rated life is quite big, generally around 20-30k hours. That is between 2.25 and 3.5 years of continuous runtime (24x7x265). At normal usage, say four hours a day, five days a week you could expect somewhere around 19 years of life.

To answer you second question, yes, you can replace the LCD assuming you can find the replacement parts. If you have to send it back to the manufacturer, you should probably just buy a new laptop. A 15" LCD screen (the bare screen) will probably run you around $500. Expect to pay $750-$1000 for the screen plus labor if you have someone do it for you. And unless you are really comfortable with doing the work, I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself. It's a really expensive oops if you mess up.

--SS

if it burned out in a day you'de be able to claim DOA

Curious on something that sits on the same topic..

Notebooks don't usually carry a sticker talking about the specifics of the monitor (dot pitch, lum, etc) so other than asking your usual clueless techie or sales rep, is there a way of knowing where say Dell buys thier LCDs and then what kind they stick in thier models (and from that figure out the specifics)?

Its rather frusterating to get these facts when a sales rep and even the technical support either rolls thiers eyes or crosses them when you ask that sort of question... They don't really consider it that important.