[Deffeh]

So for no reason at all, i turned on my laptop and it appears my display is ****ed. Imagine the screen is made up of four quarters, divided by vertical stripes. Well, the far left quarter is greyed out - as if the lighting is on at half power. gr8!

I've checked the drivers, etc, but its clearly a hardware issue - i restarted and went into the set up screen, and you can clearly see the same quarter of it is greyed out too.

SO;

1. Is this a problem that you reckon can be easily / cheaply fixed? Any ideas on approximate costs? Im not sending it away to Asus again as that was a complete ****ing disaster last time. Im also not paying £50 to get it looked at before anything is even done to the machine, especially as its a good couple of years old now.

2. Where is good to buy a new laptop? And by good, i mean reliable/cheap. I dont game, and i dont really use my machine for anything other than downloading, playing music, watching films and being a butte on IRC.

3. How far have prices dropped / has technology marched on in the last 2 years? Am i naive in thinking my mid-range laptop of 2 years ago may be a low-range laptop of today?


My current machine Specs:

ASUS A2D Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ 2.13GHz
2.13 GHz
512MB RAM
15" Screen
35GB HD
DVD +/- RW

HD not an issue because i use an external one now; A bigger screen and i'd have to get a bigger laptop bag and i'm tight, DVD +/- RW prefferable but not essential as i have an external one now, and i wouldnt settle for a slower processor or less RAM than i have now obviously but i dont care about adding too much more.


Any help, much appreciated.