Tom came over today with his laptop, hoping to get some help in fixing a busted power adapter connection. He said that when he had the adapter plugged into the laptop, it would sometimes charge the battery and sometimes not. He narrowed down the issue to the connector on the laptop’s motherboard, so he bought a replacement and needed to have it soldered on.

I asked Pat (my father in law) to help me diagnose and fix the issue. Tom and I opened up the laptop, and removed the motherboard from the case via the Dell Inspiron 6000 Service Manual. We flipped the motherboard over, then examined the leads on the motherboard, and noticed that a few of them were burnt out… not even connected.

So Pat redid the solder points, then we put the laptop back together, and wha-la, it worked. It’s nice when things work out first try…

Check out the pics:

It’s been a good couple years with my Dell Inspiron 700m laptop. But since my Vostro came (and I think it’s a keeper), I have to get rid of the 700m.

eBay Link, don’t harp the template.

I received my Dell Vostro 1500 today. I’m very pleased/impressed so far. Stay tuned for a review in a few days

I’ve been looking for reviews on the Dell Vostro 1500, and I finally found a few. It seems as though all around the board, it’s a decent system that is fairly bulky, has average battery life, and has the potential for great specs.

I’ve been saving for awhile, so, I committed to buying it today. I found the deal I needed on SlickDeals. It wasn’t any $750 off $1500, but it made the price good enough to take.

I bought the system at its base, with an upgraded LCD, graphics card, and warranty. Specs:

• *Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
• Genuine Windows® XP Home
• 15.4 in Wide Screen SXGA+LCD Display w/TrueLife™
• *1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
• 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600M GT
• 120G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
• 8X CD/DVD Burner w/ double-layer DVD+R write capability
• High Definition Audio 2.0
• Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Wi-Fi Mini Card
• 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• Get $70 Dell Dollars w/3Yr Ltd Warranty and Next Business Day On-Site Svc

For $968.00 with free shipping. The items prepended with * are those which I plan to upgrade as time and money allows.

Now to sell my Dell Inspiron 700m. Most likely on eBay. It’s school season, eBay prices on laptops are inflated at least $100 .

I’m looking at getting a new laptop that doesn’t suck at gaming (like my 700m).

I’ve been looking at the Apple Macbook Pros, Dell Inspirons and most recently the Dell Vostro. The Vostro 1700 has a keypad on its keyboard, which I find a really bad decision. So, I’m looking at the Vostro 1500 right now. Decked out to specs that I’d be happy to use, it’s ~$1175 shipped including tax.

Now, to get the wife’s approval .