Greetings my beloved ISOP (think IHOP), I've got a quick computer-tech related question for you lot.

@home I've got my vaunted craptop in the "internet terminal" role, seeing as after a very active and travelling 2009 into 2010 one little 3 foot fall killed the headphones jack, which killed my ability to output audio for sporadic DJ/live-set gigs, and thus this comptuer became my internet terminal, allowing me to do awesome things like post on facebook whilst i'm taking a shit.

Due to some poor design on toshiba's part (a first in my book), the screen mechanism started wearing out and wanting to detach from the whole of the laptop... i fortified the area around the screen with black electrical tape, however, it's safe to say that i can't close the screen even if i wanted to. the way it's designed has the actual screen pulling back, creating a little ~0.5 inch gap between the screen casing and the screen right under it, thus allowing me to see the wires that bring the video image from my laptop to my screen.

i've done all i can supplanting the actual screen-casing with electrical tape, and i baby the shit out of the actual laptop, cognizant of the wires, which i've str8up taped to their little alleyway inside the casing to make sure they don't escape and potentially get crushed by sporadic jiggering of the screen casing.

lately, the screen has started to flicker a little bit, and a couple'a times it's gone to it's idle mode where it shuts off the screen and it just doesn't come back. i would cold-shutoff the PC and turn it back on if it worked, but like, when i woke up this morning i saw the faintest outline of my windows setup in the blackness, so the screen was displaying, just at some OMFG WTF low level... then later on today it was chugging on along (occasionally it'll have little fits where it kind of flickers around between full-on-screen-mode and the dimmed screen it gives you for a few mins b4 the screen shuts off) and then after ahwile i moved the mouse to wake up the screen and there was nothing there. i should have given it another ~15-20 mins to let the screen go off and bring it back, but instead i went cold again and shut off the power, turned it back on, and here it is.

so no matter what, it's looking like the screen is probably going to up and crap out at some point within the next few months. i putzed around and see websites that sell replacement laptop screens for ~$60-80 or thereabouts, and my question is the following: is it possible to replace laptop screens, or am i looking at an endeavor that would cost like ~$250-300ish and therefore i should just look into a new laptop, seeing as you can catch a decent one in the ballpark with this one (amd athlon x2 @ 2100mhz, 3gb ram, 250gb HD) for something like $350-500.

has anyone had to deal with anything like this before? I reckon i could still hook up a proper computer monitor to this if the screen dies and shuttle everything off of it, or even use teh PC itself with a dead screen... but man, i want to have me internet terminal going for at least another year or two. has anyone had a situation like this?

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oh yeah no doubt, hence why i figured a $60-80 screen would cost me upwards of $250-300 to fix, given that i'm definitely not going to take this bitch apart and put it in.

or well, while i have the topic up... if i have to fix the screen, does anyone know a good computer place to get it fixed? preferably some sort of a moms-n-pops place cuz i reckon i could prolly get better service at a better price than, say, best buy's geek squad... plus i love to support computer mercenaries like that, because if it goes all geek squad someday, man, that's a sad thing for the world.

ironically, i myself am a computer mercenary, but i'm not good with hardware to the level where i could install a screen myself.

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You can replace them, it might be cheaper to just up and get a new one though as I wouldn't do it myself.

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You never miss your wealth, till your well went dry
Seem like only yesterday, you were here smiling
Now you gone away, but I know you in a better place
No traces of you, what can I do?
Alone and confused