Posts by crimsonlynx23

It’s always the same old story... you pay through the nose and still end up empty-handed. 🙂

I sent my machine off privately to some tech specialist out in suburban Chicago—he used to run a full shop but does private repairs now—and I've heard nothing but good things about him. Apparently, even the big-name repair centers send stuff his way when they hit a wall. He’s telling me there's a short on the motherboard that he hasn't quite pinned down yet. The weird thing is, the laptop just died mid-use—completely out of nowhere. I tried the usual troubleshooting nonsense, pulling the battery, holding down the power button for an eternity, all that jazz, but nothing worked. Ever since it cut out, it's been a total brick.

Honestly, my first choice is to get this specific unit fixed. I was actually happy with it, and let's face it, it wasn't exactly cheap.
I think I'll give Geek Squad a call and see what their take is. Who knows, maybe they'll even know the guy I sent it to.

Hey everyone. So, my old laptop—a Dell Latitude 5520—finally gave up the ghost recently. Just as the warranty expired, too, because of course it did. The motherboard bit the dust. I sent it off for a diagnostic, but honestly, they couldn't even pin down the exact failure point. Anyway, I’m looking to pick up something in the $667 range since my wife needs a machine for work, though I was hoping I might be able to scavenge some parts from the old Dell to help out.

I was browsing Best Buy and saw some decent deals on laptops that come with a 5-year warranty, so I'm wondering if any of these would allow me to swap in a DVD drive, upgrade the RAM, or maybe even swap the processor—since the specs on this Dell aren't actually that bad, at least in my book.

1.

2.
Regarding this second one, I'm curious if I could transplant the DVD drive from the Dell and perhaps tack on another 4GB of RAM.

My wife works at a school, so having an optical drive is pretty much a non-negotiable requirement for her. On top of that, I'm planning to pull a 128GB SSD from my own rig and pop it in there to save a few bucks.

Does anyone see a viable path here—either building a Frankenstein machine from these parts or perhaps finding a way to actually fix the old one?

Thanks in advance!