last night when i finished checking my email, i slid my new laptop under the bed to prevent anything falling or stepping on it. i then proceeded to lean across my bed to plug the alarm clock back in (the plug had fallen out of the wall), and my foot caught the edge of the laptop and i stepped on it.

i heard a snapping noise, i assumed it was just from lid hitting against the base, and i went to bed.

this morning i woke up late and decided to check to see if i had any work emails, and i discovered a plus-shaped crack in the upper-right of the screen with a few bleeding pixels. brand new laptop less than a month old with a beautiful 14″ screen, marred by my clumsy foot.

estimated cost for repairs: $895. just thinking about feels like having the wind knocked out of me, repeatedly.

as you can see, it looks much worse with the winxp blue background than just plain white. i count about 100 dead pixels (out of 1,470,000).

update: make that $495 of pain. after getting quoted prices like $895 for the replacement and repair from ibm, and $700+ labor from UNC, i decided to do a little searching around (ebay, google) and discovered that there are some outfits that sell just the LCD screens–you know for people like me who step on theirs.

after doing some research into the guts of my laptop, i discovered LCDS 4 LESS had the screen for my laptop at a much reduced though still painful cost of $495. they also said it only takes about 15 minutes to install. so i’m going to do it myself, and then probably put up the busted but working LCD panel on ebay.

update: see replacing a laptop lcd screen for my write-up of the process.