Broken Laptop Hinge.... help?

[jmc]

So, my wonderful girlfriend managed to break one of the hinges of my sony laptop.

It has a thick steel L bracked that connects the base of the laptop, to the screen casing (part that is snapped in half). Is this something that is actually fixable? At the current moment, the laptop cannot be closed at all due to this.

[Mayareira]

Broken hinges of my Vaio cost me around 600$ back in 2003-4~ :/ Your best bet is to get them replaced by service.

Sony charges around...200~ nowadays for physical repairs iirc. Hinges are nasty stuff, I tried to repair them myself back them but couldn't.

[Kazen]

It might not have even been her fault, hinges will break if you don't tighten them. Usually on the back there is a hidden screw on both sides sometimes covered by one of those plastic sticker dot things that you can put back on top of the screw after you tighten it.

[jmc]

It might not have even been her fault, hinges will break if you don't tighten them. Usually on the back there is a hidden screw on both sides sometimes covered by one of those plastic sticker dot things that you can put back on top of the screw after you tighten it.

She was good about it, I guess she tried shutting the laptop hard while the AC cord was in between the base and screen.... causing the break.

Guess i'll give sony a call tomorrow, thanks

[orinthia]

One of the hinges in my old dell d600 laptop broke a few months back. Managed to just pull the broken pieces out and the remaining hinge is enough to keep the screen up (hinge broke on the bottom half). Not sure how sony hinges their laptops but you may be able to just live with one hinge if you'd rather not pay a bunch of cash to fix it. You just won't be able to pick it up by the screen side anymore.

[jmc]

Ran it down to the sony store near me.

Rough estimate of $250 to fix..... not too bad, if that would be around the actual repair price.

[Mayareira]

Yeah, they have a flat rate of 270$ for physical damages/repairs.
Wouldn't recommend using the computer with 1 hinge, pressure gets onto that single hinge and ends up breaking it as well.

[Jaraude]

If you are comfortable with doing the repair yourself you may be able to just purchase the hinge from sony (probably need to call customer support to check on availability) or you may be able to find a seller on ebay. I had a hinge break on a Dell laptop and could not get the hinge from Dell but was able to buy it on eBay (just the hinge) for less than $20. You can probably find a pdf of the service manual for your laptop online if you need it but once you have the hinge it is not too hard to fix. I have also used this method for fixing my digital camera (Kodak). My wife dropped it and broke the little flap that holds the batteries in and again the part wasn't available from Kodak so I turned to eBay and found someone that sold the flap, ordered it, fixed my camera and it was good as new again.

Forget paying $200+ to fix this. Figure out the part # for the hinge that is used in your model, find a way to buy it (Sony/eBay), and do it yourself. Should not cost you more that $20.