Latitude E series long term ownership thread

The wobble is simply the hinge screws backing out slightly with use. Pop the plastic cover between the keyboard and the hinges off to expose the screws and then tighten them up. The screen is then as wobble-free as it was the day it came from the factory. I've not had to do this with my E5400 but I've done it on other machines and it works perfectly.

My E5400 that I've had since Nov 2008 hasn't developed any hinge wobble. The only thing that's happened to it is a tiny crack in the plastic between the keyboard and the PCMCIA card slot. Not bad for a machine I haul around everywhere and frequently gets roughly handled by others who briefly mistake my personal E5400 for the hospital's E6400s (they don't provide me my own computer yet )

 

I pop the key caps off my desktop keyboards, put them in a cheesecloth bag, and run them through the dishwasher. They're IBM Model Ms, so they have the removable key caps. I take an air duster and blow the keyboard out at the same time to remove built-up dust and debris. Do this regularly and the keyboard will probably last forever. My two Ms are 17 years and 23 years old, so that's probably not an overstatement.

I shudder to think what's built up on my laptop's keyboard since I use it at the hospital. I wipe it off with the small alcohol wipes that nurses use before they start an IV with some regularity, but I still betcha you'd isolate MRSA, VRE, Clostridium difficile or other nastiness if you checked it at the wrong time. I don't worry about much viruses since they generally don't live for very long outside the body, plus the OS is Linux so they can't live in the computer, either

 

Totally right about all that. Sadly who has time to do all that regularly...