Laptop woes

Last Wednesday, my Dell Inspiron 5150 notebook computer shut down as if the battery were discharged. After charging it for an afternoon, the computer not longer turned on. If the laptop were disconnected from AC power and power button pressed, the power and battery lights would flash once. If the laptop were connected to AC power and power button pressed, no lights would come on.

Pressing the Function key and the power button was supposed to start a 30 sec diagnostic, but nothing happened. Pressing the left Shift key and the power button started the fan whirring until I pulled the battery out. Not even holding down the power button would make it shut off. Dell technical support concluded that a new motherboard was in order and that would cost CA$317 after shipping and taxes.

I borrowed a electronic scale (Soehnle, 5000g x 1g) from a co-worker and weighed all the pieces. The masses are as follows.

Part	Mass (g)
Screen	1,302	28.2%
Power adapter	720	15.6%
Battery	635	13.8%
Motherboard w/ P4 and heatsink	576	12.5%
Bottom cover w/ wireless card and modem	331	7.2%
Top cover w/ touchpad	301	6.5%
CD drive	185	4.0%
Power cord	136	3.0%
Hard drive w/ holder	126	2.7%
Keyboard	95	2.1%
Video card	49	1.1%
Heat sink cover plate	26	0.6%
Memory cover plate	22	0.5%
Wireless card cover plate	22	0.5%
Video card heatsink	21	0.5%
CD drive guide	20	0.4%
2 x SDRAM	19	0.4%
Power switch cover	16	0.3%
Battery bracket	7	0.2%
	4,609

The equivalent mass in imperial units is 10 lb 3 oz.