E1705 problems and questions

Hi everyone!

My brother gave me an older Dell laptop (about 3 yrs old I think) that had a dead battery, broken screen, dead touch pad, and other misc problems. I was wondering if I could take off the screen and use an external mouse and monitor? This would be used to replace my moms old HP desktop running Windows 95 until she has enough money to get her own machine.

The screen is held on with 4 screws and has either one or two plugs. Would there be any problem with doing this?

Thanks,

Sam

 

Why bother removing the display? You can just use the laptop's VGA port to hook it up to an external VGA monitor, and plug a mouse into a USB or PS/2 port, if it has one of those.

But to answer your question, you should have no problems if you remove the display entirely, and just use an external display via VGA.

 

Well I want to take the screen off and have the bottom part of the laptop in front of the screen. The laptop isn't worth fixing with the problems it has but it isn't quite ready for the trash. If I can get it to work for my mom in a way she would be able to use it, it will save her some money. If I could afford it, I would get her a brand new computer or I would get myself a new Sager and let her have my current one but the money just isn't there for either of us.

 

That makes sense. I'm just pointing out that you can still use the laptop with an external display, even with the laptop's own display still attached.

 

Yeah, you can.

But on some older Dell machines, this isn't as happy as you think it'd be. If you've got the internal monitor attached, the machine won't default to the external monitor unless you tell it to... in Windows. And if your screen is broken and you can't see what you're doing in Windows, well, you get the idea.

Not sure if this applies specifically to your laptop, but I know it's the case for the D600 generation Latitudes.