I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened but today I dropped my laptop and cracked the screen. The system appears to boot up fine but the screen is divided into a mess of white and black patches and fault lines and the other half, clarity. Looking at various repair sites, I see that a new LCD panel runs about 399 bucks for an Inspiron 3800. Heck, I could buy a whole, used Inspiron 3800 for 500 on the auction sites.
Sigh, I guess could run the laptop as a Linux server and just use another monitor as a head when I need it. Another innocent laptop destined for RE-PC.