Galane

What? Another Dell laptop? How many does he have? Just four, for now. <VBEG> People leave these in the free electronics pile at the local landfill transfer station. (Core 2 quad tower with Radeon HD GPU, 8 gig and 1TB? Of course I'll snag that!) This one is a Dell Studio 1737. I've only two things to ask on it. What was the highest resolution display on offer and what's the best CPU it can take? In another case of Dell offering satin beige paint on a sports car, this one also has the icky 1366x768 resolution. Made all the uglier by being 17". I can see the pixels! I'm having CRT monitor flashbacks! Why, Dell, why did you do this to your flagship products? Take a cue from Carrol Shelby, "mandatory options". If you buy the high end, you aren't allowed to have the worst display.

Oh no, not another old Dell laptop! This time it's a serious case of a very dead Inspiron 1526. Absolutely zero response to the power button, except holding Fn then pressing power makes the Numlock LED blink steadily, the Capslock LED come on while the Scroll lock LED stays off. Nobody seems to know what dire condition this diagnostic code is for, not even Dell. Some people have resurrected their 1526 (or 1525 by replacing the CMOS battery. I put in a new one while I had it apart to replace the power input board to fix the broken power jack. So it's not a dead CMOS battery. The one removed was 0.6 volt. I checked the new one, slightly over 3 volts. Plugged it in and the battery charged normally, with the LED progressing from on to blinking to off. I didn't try turning it on until it was charged. I've tried holding the power button for various lengths of time with it unplugged and the battery out and tried plugging it in with and without the button held. Dead, still dead, yup, still dead. Tried a different CPU I know is good, still dead. Tested the RAM in another laptop, it's good. I'm guessing that when whatever happened to the power jack happened, it shorted as it broke and spiked the mainboard. They're not too spendy on eBay. Is it possible to swap in a 1525 board to convert it to Intel CPU? If I'm going to throw money at this one, what was the highest display resolution available, if there were options on that for this model?

I have an old XPS M140 laptop with a thin, green line down the right of the 1280x800 display. Looks to be one pixel wide. Were there different resolutions available? If so, what was the highest? I've maxed the RAM to 2 gig. Tried 3 but with a 2 gig under the keyboard it read it as 1 gig. With the 2 gig in the bottom it got funky colored blocks on the screen. Looks like that's where it puts the video memory. Next, I'd like to restore the Media Direct partition but I don't have the disc and haven't been able to find one anywhere, not even the part number for the disc. All I find are ones for Media Direct 3 or later, this needs 2.0. I'm not going to try using anything but XP Media Center 2005 on it. I have service manual DVDs for 90's and early 2000's cars that only work properly on XP and this small laptop is ideal for taking to the cars. I can use it with the line on the display but not having it would be nicer. Last thing, the click is gone from the left button. Still works but often works inadvertently and the button is wobbly. Is that fixable without replacing the mainboard?

I was given a Latitude E6500 (woohoo! free laptop!) minus battery and with the 1366x768 LCD., and without the nVidia GPU. Scored a 9 cell battery on eBay for $15 so now it's portable. RAM is PC3-10700. 6 gig. Somewhere along the line someone swapped one of the sticks for a 2 gig. Service Tag info says 8 gig. CPU is Core i7 3540M. Already have Windows 10 on it. I'm interested in doing some upgrades, most needed is a 1920x1080 display. I know I can swap a complete 1080p lid from another E6530, but to broaden the possibilities, what other models used lids compatible with this one? This is the main thing I want to do because my old MPC T2500 has a nicer, higher resolution display, though not quite 1080p. Alternatively, I can get a bare panel and the cable kit but yeowch, the price. In contrast, mainboards with the nVidia GPU are plentiful and fairly inexpensive. Looks like they take a different cooler so I'd have to get that too. Can I use the current CPU on one of those boards? If I have to get a different CPU to go with the nVidia board, what's the top one that will work, without any hacking? What's the top CPU for it as it is? I'd like to do both upgrades for less than simply just buying an E3650 that already has 1080x1920 and nVidia. Either way it's going to cost a bit, but I'll most likely be using this as my main laptop for a few years. I've had the MPC for quite a while, bought in state police auction lot with several other Micron, MicronPC and MPC laptops. And I still have my old Acer Aspire 5315, which promptly got a Core 2 Duo transplant, bigger hard drive, DVD burner, and is now running Ubuntu.