More Laptop Dissection...

When I was in the Philippines the left button of my touch pad on my laptop died, so I ordered the part online. I've been putting off dissecting my laptop for more than a month now and it's a 3 day weekend so it was time... I was getting tired of using a mouse.

I love my Dell Inspiron E1505... but I've had issues with it. The M button went on my keyboard last year, so had to replace the keyboard. The hinges on the laptop lid went and needed to be replaced and now the touch pad needed to be replaced. I get my Dell parts from Parts-People.com

In order to replace the touch pad the entire front cover palm rest had to be removed. Which meant I had to take out my cd/dvd drive, remove my keyboard and take off the LCD Display... fun.... I just love dissecting my laptop, lol. I'm always so grateful Dell has the service manual published online.

It took about 40 minutes to remove and replace everything. And there was 3 years of dust, dirt and grime once the palm rest was removed... wow... yuck! I cleaned that out before replacing everything. So now I have my touch pad back. My co-worker joked with me and said if I keep replacing parts I'm just going to have a whole new laptop eventually, haha!

My laptop is nearly 3 years old now.... I bought it back in May of 2006. I love it, because I got to customize it online when I purchased it. I like alot of simulation type games, mainly the The Sims 2, The Sims, Sim City 4, Roller Coaster Tycoon Series, etc. I also create alot of web graphics with Macromedia Fireworks. So I really wanted a system that could handle those types of programs.

My laptop has a 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo Processor, 2GB of RAM, 100GB hard drive, 256MB ATI Radeon video card. Plus it has a really nice 15.4 wide screen display. I paid the extra money for the 2.0GHz processor because that's the most important part of a computer. I wanted a laptop that could perform like a desktop.

My #1 rule for buying a computer is to make sure you have at least a 2.0GHz processor or better, #2 would be your RAM (at least 1GB or more.), #3 video card (at least 256MB or more.), #4 hard drive size, etc. It really depends on what you want to use your system for. If you want your computer to run fast & smooth, the processor speed is what you should look for first in a system.

My only issue with Dell, is the casing for their laptops... very cheap plastic. The computer system itself though, runs great... so I don't mind that I've had to make some repairs to my laptop over the past few years. As long as your LCD screen or motherboard isn't damaged it's definitely cheaper to do the repairs yourself. (Which... if those go... you're better off just buying a whole new computer anyway!)