[mdlug] OT: laptop power problems

[David Relson]

Hi All,

I know this is off topic but ...

My son is a sophomore at the U.M. School of Engineering and his laptop
has a problem.  The laptop is a Dell Inspiron E1505 that's 18 months
old.

The laptop works fine off of the battery.  Plugged in (but without the
battery) it doesn't run. He's tested with a friend's power brick and
the symptoms are the same. We suspect a problem with the power jack
(port) in the laptop.

Does anybody have experience with such problems?  What do you recommend?
Obviously one solution is ship it back to Dell for repairs.  I presume
that's slower than one would wish.  Are there any reasonable
homebrew solutions?  Do any of the local (Ann Arbor) computer stores
do such repairs?

Thanks.

David

P.S. Please "Reply All" as he's not on the mailing list.