Dell Inspiron 1545 Repair or Not

I still have a donated 1545 in storage. It needs a new screen which shouldn't be too difficult. Probably also the bezel. I tested it with a borrowed hard drive and the motherboard is fine. It also boots into BIOS (used and secondary monitor for testing) I am calculating the cost of repair to be close to 150.00 if I or one of the other volunteers does the work. That isn't much unless you're running a non profit student access group. We could use that amount of money for parts for other computers. Is the 1545 worth repairing in that it will be given to a student who will have no money to do further work on it if that arises? How reliable was this particular laptop?

 

Gah, this is Dell's highest selling notebook.

When I worked as a technician, I always cringed when I'd accept these for repairs, and always crossed my fingers when booting it up after a disassembly.

I've had several instances where the laptop would short onto the power supply, never to be alive again. Definitely a finicky computer as compared to Thinkpads or Macs.

 

The 1545 screen is ~70-90 dollars maybe less depending on where you get it from, it is a bottom of the barrel 1368x786 15.6" screen. You might be able to buy the entire display assembly online for roughly the same price.

I haven't seen major major issues with the 1545.

 

Thanks for the guidelines. Given that no real techs ever volunteer their time in our area, I think this one should go to craigslist. No one donates IBM's either:-(