Pics Included, I cut the center out of my m1340 edge-to-edge plastic screen, its an antiglare beneath...

Yup, I went insane and cut along the black-to-clear border of the m1340 screen thing; The thing they call "edge to edge glass" which is really just plastic above an ordinary screen. The thing is, that the screen under that edge to edge plastic is a nice anti-glare screen, no kidding! You can see this if you take your laptop in sunlight and tilt it the right way.

So what's happening is you're getting the worst part of an anti-glare screen (reduced contrast ratio) plus the worst part of a glossy screen (unless you have a really pretty face).

I took the plastic thing off, cut along the black/clear border, pulled out the middle, and stuck the centerless border back on the laptop.

Result? THIS SCREEN IS FANTASTIC.

One thing you may not have considered is that the screen in its default position has yet another flaw, both sides of that glossy plastic thing are glossy, so some of the light coming from the screen is reflected back to the screen, and as you know light reflected onto the screen has a yellowish tint. That is my guess as to why the whites on this screen are really really white now, and the screen is much brighter. This also explains why other 300nit screens used to look so much brighter than this.

I will have more pics when I am able to charge the battery to my good camera. If anyone has any questions about removing that plastic thing I'll be happy to answer your questions, it's actually pretty easy. For those interested, here is how I did it:

1. I removed the "star" head screws, this was accomplished not with a special star head screw driver, but an ordinary flat head precision screw driver.

2. Put some paper over a hacksaw blade to avoid scratching, wedged it under the plastic near the top where the camera is, and snapped out the first of the several lock-in points on along the top edge. I proceeded to detatch the rest of the top of the screen in this way.

3. Both the left and right sides were held on mostly by adhesive, the very edge point locks in slightly, but the efforts removing these sides are focused mainly on separating the adhesive bond.

4. I pulled upward on the plastic and it came right off, there seems to be no adhesive or lock-in points on the bottom side.

5. Using the center of the screen as a test area, I tested several cutting utilities and decided on the utility knife. To my surprise, the plastic was about 1mm thick.

6. I clamped the screen down to the table, with a straight edge positioned 1mm inward of the black line, to give headroom for errors.

7. I cut along these lines, and repeated step 6 for each side, and pushed out the center to reveal the border piece that now resembled a common laptop screen enclosure border.

8. I used a medium grit sand paper to bring the cut lines to meet the black lines, and finished it off with a fine grit sand paper.

9. I applied some electrical tape to the area between the edge of the screen itself, and the edge of the laptop on the right and left sides because there was light leakage, and then popped the border back on and screwed it down.

Found the charger! Here's the high res shots. They do *some* justice to the screen quality.

 

Very very interesting. And it looks like you did a great job.

 

Thanks, I did try to keep things looking nice. I'm modifying the camera charger from a different camera right now to charge the battery to my good camera. I'll add some good pictures when the mod and charge is finished.

 

Very interesting and I might just try this. Thanks!

edit: if I had an allen key small enough. Man those are some tiny screws.

 

Wow, this is really interesting! can you post some picture of the entire screen? So we can see how the quality differs?

 

Now, that's the anti-glare option for you Dell. Go take that Edge-to-Edge glass out.

 

So under the edge-to-edge plastic is a matte screen

Visually how will this edge-to-edge screen (matte screen inside) compare with real/normal glossy screen?

 

He said the screen is fantastic. Too bad we don't have before and after pictures.

 

He's going to do it, be patient

 

interesting

 

won't this void your warranty?

 

Durrrrr!!

 

As soon as he mentioned "hacksaw", that should have thrown a red flag.

 

Here's the deal with the pics, they're on delay because modifying the other charger didn't work out so well (don't know why, connections were solid). I ordered a replacement charger from dealextreme, along with a rubiks cube (random info.) I'll have nice hi res shots when it gets here. I'll take some more pictures with the so so camera and post them within the hour.

 

New pics are posted, see the initial page.

 

Wow that is awesome, when I first started reading I thought it was going to look terrible but it looks like it was not even there!

 

I wonder why Dell would do that? I mean use a Matte screen and than make it glossy..

 

Anyone feel like doing it to their SXPS 16?

 

If I had an SXPS 16, I'd be hounding my neighbor for a hacksaw.

 

You sir have bigger balls than I do.

 

Nice job looks amazing. Wish I had the courage to do it.

Any one having problems with the ethernet on the 1340? Mines does not work after the system resumes from sleep(win 7 and vista x64)

 

Lol your still trying to get that solved ill read your thread and see if i can help you

 

i am way too much of a perfectionist for this fix. the small gap between the remaining plastic and the lcd would drive me crazy. and no amount of sanding could make it perfect enough of an edge. for me, this is a measure of last resort if you scratch the plastic and your warranty has already ended.

 

Too much of a perfectionist?

According to the guy, the screen looks better than without the plastic.

It's like driving around a Dodge Viper with a car cover on.

You should label yourself an protectionist.

Or a pragmatic.

 

oh no i hope they haven't done the same crap to the sxps-16 ....


please no

 

Well done sir. I have two points to make.

1. You sir are a madman. Kudos.

2. That is epic.

 

I can't get over how nice that screen looks.

 

That is amazing and depending on my level of gutsiness, I'm going to attempt this on an xps 16!!!!!!
Who else has done this besides livincali?

 

I hope you all realize how good that screen looks, WHILE LOOKING AT IT ON YOUR SCREEN.

 

how'd you get that 3d square image thing of your desktop ? is that just 2 shots from different angles stitched together?

 

The 3D square image is a visual representation of the virtual desktops. It's a Linux thing, provided by Compiz. You'll see what I'm talking about if you youtube "compiz"

 

I think I'm gonna do this.. what were the tools needed again

 

I have always hated the stupid "glass" they put over the screen. It is crap plastic that scratches really easily, doesn't sit flush so it touches the keyboard, and is just useless. If they put REAL glass it wouldn't be so bad, but I just hate it on my SXPS13. I don't think I would be able to make this mod look good, so I won't attempt it. I wish someone would sell a replacement insert to put instead of the edge to edge "glass" that only has the borders and looks good.

 

I don't trust myself cutting it neither, I plan on taking it to the hardware store to get it cut to precision

but I'm kinda clueless on the sanding part.. so after I get it cut.. when I sand it the edges are supposed to be smooth?

 

The sanding worked out like this. Once I had removed the border I realized the lines to cut had already been drawn for me, I cut right along where the clear and black meet, but instead of cutting the directly in-between, I cut about a millimeter inward. So when I was done cutting there was a millimeter of clear plastic to sand off.

The purpose was to give myself room for error when cutting, because it wouldn't matter what errors I made, so long that they occurred in the clear region. Basically if you have all of the black part covered you can't screw up too badly. If you had it professionally cut it might look cool without sanding it at all.

My next project will be making the reflective glossy (fingerprint magnet) surface dull. I'll be doing the border, hotkey plastic, palm rest and the lid. If you own an sxps or one of its derivatives I'm sure you're well aware of the current "my laptop looks like crap and I just cleaned it" dilemma.

 

wish I had the guts and equipment to do this

 

yeah I am.. its a pita!!!

how would you make it dull?

 

Either sand it with an extremely fine sand paper, or sand it and paint it. The problem with painting is the hot keys would be painted over, so I'd have to leave that part as-is. I'm not very familiar with working on finishes. I still need to look into it, there may be a much better solution.

Suggestions anyone?

 

so, I'm thinking about doing this... but I don't think I'm going to cut the middle out if I can help it. I'm thinking about just removing the plastic screen completely.

Is there going to be any problems with this such as the backlight leaking or something stupid like that? I don't really care too much for aesthetic if my screen looks better.

 

It'll look like crap, and there'll be electronics exposed that could cause a short. And yes, there'll be some light leakage. Seriously it'll look really really crappy if you don't put a border on it, and I don't know about durability either. Also your wifi antennas will be exposed, and they're the type that can be bent.