Revive old dell laptop?

BAcon

BAcon

BAcon

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near Bristol
I have a 13 yr old Dell laptop that is in need of some tlc, it is of the following specs:

Dell L702X XPS 17"
I7-2630QM
GT550M (may be a gt555m)
6GB DDR3 (2gb and 4gb)
256GB SSD and a 500gb hdd

The screen hinge/bezel etc is cracked on one side of the screen, the vertical bar that supports the screen and attaches to the hinge is snapped and the lid itself which the hinge screws into is broken as a result. Additionally the 9 cell battery is completely dead and requires plugging in to operate at all times.

So my thoughts process is basically surrounding whether this old thing is worth repairing to a low standard in order I can keep it going and using it as a laptop to an extent, or whether I call it a day.

Repair cost:
Epoxy the hinge to the snapped mounts on the lid or replace lid £20 (used and a bit scruffy but structurally looks good)
Hinge bar £20
Replacement battery £15 (cheapest junk) or £70 OEM
Total cost £35 to £110

I Won't be worrying about cosmetics, but that would get it operational as a laptop.

Additionally it could do with
Memory 2x8gb ddr3 £20

So cheapest solution is epoxy the lid, replace the hinge bar, cheapest battery and memory upgrade to 16gb, should be around £55.

Given the specs, is this old dog worth keeping going? Or is the spec going to struggle against even some basic micro pcs that cost as much as these repairs!
 
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BAcon said:
I have a 13 yr old Dell laptop that is in need of some tlc, it is of the following specs:

Dell L702X XPS 17"
I7-2630QM
GT550M (may be a gt555m)
6GB DDR3 (2gb and 4gb)
256GB SSD and a 500gb hdd

The screen hinge/bezel etc is cracked on one side of the screen, the vertical bar that supports the screen and attaches to the hinge is snapped and the lid itself which the hinge screws into is broken as a result. Additionally the 9 cell battery is completely dead and requires plugging in to operate at all times.

So my thoughts process is basically surrounding whether this old thing is worth repairing to a low standard in order I can keep it going and using it as a laptop to an extent, or whether I call it a day.

Repair cost:
Epoxy the hinge to the snapped mounts on the lid or replace lid £20 (used and a bit scruffy but structurally looks good)
Hinge bar £20
Replacement battery £15 (cheapest junk) or £70 OEM
Total cost £35 to £110

I Won't be worrying about cosmetics, but that would get it operational as a laptop.

Additionally it could do with
Memory 2x8gb ddr3 £20

So cheapest solution is epoxy the lid, replace the hinge bar, cheapest battery and memory upgrade to 16gb, should be around £55.

Given the specs, is this old dog worth keeping going? Or is the spec going to struggle against even some basic micro pcs that cost as much as these repairs!
Click to expand...
Heh, I just fitted some new keys (one got ripped off, other dodgy) on a I5-2350m Fujitsu Siemens laptop of similar vintage.
As ever, it entirely depends on your use case. Mine is browsing email and some light homework duty for the kids, perfect for that and I don't care if it gets damaged. (or the youngest puts stickers on it)

If its powerful enough for your use, I would sort it for that price. (cheaper option). You mention micro pc, but then if you are not moving this round, dont change the battery.
Mind, I did a dull tear down of mine last year as fan was running all the time, basically had no thermal paste..... Much better now.
 
Yeh just taking it apart at the moment, 13yr old thermal paste on the CPU and GPU are pretty crusty. Surprisingly clean inside otherwise though, considering how loud this has become.

Will replace the paste now and put it back together, ready for my screen repair option of choice.
You're probably right on the battery, perhaps not worth it. Was just thinking if the power cable ever comes loose at least it wouldn't just instantly power off!
 
I bought one of these new in 2010 and its still going today. Think it was the 701x with a GT435M in it. Swapped the 500gb sata drive for a 240gb SSD and put the 500gb in the spare slot. I think i put 16gb ram in it, but it could have been 8gb - its a while ago.
Having said that, its still a great machine and running like a dream. If i were you, i'd keep it going.
 
I've still got my old Dell work laptop which is around 13 years old now as they let me keep it when I got a new one. Put an SSD in it and it ran fine for many more years. Think it's past it now but old Dell laptops (the business stuff anyway) tend to be very capable home devices for quite a while.
 
For me, I'd fix it and keep it going. Ebay replacement lid, even if it is a bit scuffed, and sort the hinge out, would keep the screen safe.
I'd likely choose the cheap battery option, unless planning on using it for extended periods out of the house. 16gb of memory is worth it at that price too.
Throw on Linux Mint, install TLP to sort power usage, and it'd be an ancient but decent enough laptop.
 
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Ordered the lid and hinges, same seller had both.

Seems my arctic silver 5 was all gone....must have used it all sorting out a couple of ps4s a little while back

Seems I'm massively out of date with thermal paste as nobody uses AS5 anymore!!
So I've done a little research and ended up with some Arctic MX4 on the way. Seems like a reliable long lasting paste, so refitting the cooler is delayed a little. But that will give time for the lid to arrive. Will get 16gb of memory to go with it too.

I've been dual booting it through last few years, windows 10 and Ubuntu, but I'll check out some other distros before I commit this time.
 
I have the same laptop which I got from my brother several years back.
I haven't used it a great deal but over the weekend I installed Windows 7. It had a fresh install of Windows 10 (and before that Ubuntu) but it ran very slowly despite upgrading the RAM to 8 GB. It's not surprising as it only has an i3-2310M CPU and doesn't have an SSD. Windows 7 runs much better.

Like yours it has the GT 550M and the battery is dead which I won't be replacing. A few years back I took it apart, cleaned it out, and replaced the thermal paste with Arctic Silver 5 too.

Hopefully yours has the 1080p display as the 1600x900 panel in this one has bad viewing angles.
 
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Own the same laptop, purchased new back in 2011 and still going strong. It's a great laptop, and worth salvaging.

Battery life was rubbish from new, a couple of hours max. I removed the battery and used it permanently hooked up to the mains. Battery lasts about 40 mins now. Mine was upgraded to Windows 10, SSD, backlit keyboard and used at work for ages. The screen is still decent after all these years.

Was great fun playing games, hooking up 3 Xbox controllers and playing light local co-op games (Trine etc).

Mine is sitting in a drawer, needs a tidy up and thermal paste. Prior to seeing this thread, I was going to downgrade back to Windows 7 and use it as a retro machine. Seeing @rare post, Windows XP would be brilliant - inspired me to investigate. :)
 
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BAcon said:
Good point. Will take a look, this one is completely dead so can't make it any worse
Click to expand...

When I restored an ancient Acer Aspire 5739G which hadn't been used in donkeys years the battery appeared dead and the laptop wouldn't even try to charge it when plugged in. But Google said that some laptop batteries can be "reset" so the laptop will see it and charge it again. With this laptop it was a case of removing the CMOS battery and shorting the + and - terminals on the CMOS battery socket. I think that is nothing special really, just fully draining the CMOS. I believe some laptops have a reset button through a pin hole which I would guess just does the same thing like any CMOS reset jumper on a normal mobo. Anyway, after doing this the battery came back to life and was still able to hold a decentish charge. I ended up getting a new battery anyway, but if all you need is for it to keep powered on for 10 minutes if the cord is pulled out then may be worth trying.

edit: Actually, now that I'm remembering properly, I think I bought the new battery first as I assumed the old was completely dead, and the laptop refused to charge the new battery until I had done this CMOS reset, so it was confused somewhere along the line. After that I tried the old battery and it did charge up as well as above.
 
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I tried the battery trick but to no avail, might pick one up at some point. But for now it is running great, cleaned it up, dropped 16GB of memory into it and sorted the hinge. It's running Windows 10 very well.
 
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