I’ve just finished getting my laptop set up the way I like it, including maximising the RAM and upgrading the screen. I opened it up to use it, and the screws on the hinge tore through the plastic.
To top it off, the plastic on the bottom of the laptop, the side that’s been removed here, has also broken.
My wife definitely didn’t drop the laptop while she was tidying up though…
This happened on a decent spec’d HP laptop I bought my mom a couple years back. No easy way to repair without ordering new hinges that were impossible to find and the PC repair shop quoted over $500 repair on a $700 laptop when it was new.
Now she just leaves the laptop open in the 180 degree position with the laptop being held into a stand & bungie cord strapped to it to prevent it from falling foward. It is now a desktop PC and no longer a laptop.
I was debating doing something similar, and putting it behind the TV to replace the Fire Stick, but I’ve found what looks like compatible plastics on ebay. My base has broken quite badly too, so replacing both is going to be my best bet.
Daft question, but have you tried ebay for the hinges, or a spares or repairs listing?
You could also just keep it closed and set it to do nothing on screen close. Then enable WoL.
My work laptop lives under my router, and I just remote into it daily.
I gave it a very short search back when it broke last year. I went with the cheapest way to get it back up and running which was just convert it to a desktop. She never goes anywhere with a laptop in the first place so there was no need to make it portable again.
She’s retired and just used it to surf the web. A Chromebook would work perfectly for her if she was not dead set of having Excel for her recipes and bill tracking.
Fair enough :)
She sounds similar to my mother. She’s got a laptop that never moves too, but refuses to consider a desktop 🤷🏻♂️
I assume she’s using a separate keyboard/mouse, right? Though I’m enjoying the mental picture of someone trying to touch type on a vertical keyboard.
I did not want to deal with the remote IT support of it all, so I plugged in a mouse/keyboard and a second monitor to make it more like a desktop PC setup, lol.
That’s the way to do it. I used a broken laptop like that as my daily driver for a few years after losing my desktop and being unable to replace it.