NP5793 Rock-solid build quality

So my beloved laptop recently had a little accident.

It was seated on top of a Notepal Infinite, which was on top of a lapdesk - a flat base like a bed in breakfast tray but with a cushion full of beanbag balls attached to the base. My darling girlfriend and I were enjoying an episode of Heroes at the time. Unfortunately, my girlfriend's foot pushed the cushion a bit too hard, knocking my laptop off the edge of the bed, landing on the screen, closing up as gravity brought the attached tiny speakers and laptray crashing down on its back.

The episode continued to play (I suspect the fact that the chick who heals was on contributed to it remaining alive)

Bad jokes aside, it seems to be in phenomenal condition, excepting four teeny-tiny issues.

Looking at the screen, there's a crack on the back of the far right side, above the fans, along the 'spine' of the laptop, below two screws next to each other - further right than the copper vents.

The entire screen seems to wobble on the hinges, they don't have the hold they used to on the screen.

On the lower right side of the screen that would be very close to the crack, there's a gap between the bezel and the back cover that holds the screen together. It isn't immediately noticeable, but if you run a finger along the side, the two bits of the back cover split apart.

Something rattles inside, above where the battery sits. I opened the laptop up and tried to figure out what exactly the rattler is, but didn't want to open the laptop beyond the first plate that covers the fans.

Despite all this, the computer is running perfectly fine. I am blown away by the build quality, as the laptop fell from a height of nearly two feet and landed on the screen, and almost everything is intact.

One additional thing, the pressure balance I could once hear seems to be off. It's more noticeable with fans on full. The overall pressure of air inside the laptop seems skewed - there's a whooshing sound over the sound of the fans at full speed, like something is blocking a vent or something, though the air seems to be coming out uniformly.

Basically, I just want to know what could be and could go wrong with the laptop if I don't send it in to Sager to have a look-sie. The Sager representative, Ty, that I spoke to yesterday mentioned that while nothing would necessarily go horribly wrong, that little rattler could theoretically scratch something, or get sucked into a fan and screw stuff up - not his words, he wanted to be as noncommittal as possible about theoretical damages, but I gave him the option of saying aye or nay to my doomsday scenarios.

If all this crap has to get changed (Bottom case, top case, hinges (both, they don't do them separately), it could theoretically cost me close to 300 bucks, not counting shipping and labor (does the labor warranty cover accidental damage?). Plus I'd have to account for the fact that the person my laptop would travel to the States with would only be there for a grand total of three weeks, necessitating quicker shipping, costing more.

Anything?

 

Additional thingie - The cover over the expresscard slot doesn't stay in, it remains in the top loading sleeve I put my laptop into.

 

I don't know what to say... it's really just up to you to figure out what is broken and what is not.

 

Bottom Line = It isn't worth a repair bill of $300+, unless the performance is greatly hindered. The machine is too old to be putting that kind of coin into it.