Thinkpads Forum

I gather the topic of bad screens has been beaten to death in these forums, so let me simply ask you this. What's involved in swapping out the panel for something better? I don't want to hear about the economics or the folly of it, I just want to know whether it's technically possible, how much expertise you would need and some idea of the cost. Or, if this has been explored elsewhere, could you point me there? Oh and by the way, I've got the touch-screen option, which I'd like to retain, if possible; don't laugh - no harm in asking, is there?

Suppressing internal sarcasm and mockery, you'd need a panel with the proper holes for mounting inside the rails/lid, the proper connector and proper signals going through that unless you want to splice cables. (Oh the fun) It also has to be dimensionally similar enough and draw roughly the same power load, etc.

Oh right, on the touchscreen, that depends on if the digitizer is part of the LCD or if its separate. If you have it as part of the panel, you're screwed and need to find another panel that has a digitizer built in, too. If its separate, you need to put it back together on the right way and calibrate it. I don't know about capacitive multitouch but that would be what happens with a resistive touchscreen.

What I had at the back of my mind was this article from MacWorld:

http://www.macworld.com/article/138574/ ... rembp.html

When the Apple unibody Macbooks came out with only glossy screens available, an enterprising laptop repair company, called TechRestore, started offering a conversion service to matte screens. As far as I recall the process was meant to be comparatively difficult, due to the unibody construction, but was nevertheless offered for just $200 + shipping according to the article (at that price I presume they must have retained the original screens for repairing other laptops). Now look where we are today: due to customer demand, and perhaps not least due to companies like the above, I believe matte screens are once again available from Apple. If an article was written about some company converting Lenovo screens, I don't imagine Lenovo would be too happy about that. Perhaps it would coax them into doing something about it. Even a YouTube video about someone doing it themselves might do more than complaining about it in a forum.

You know, that would bother Lenovo as much as hardcore Dell/HP/Sony fans. (Read: "None")
Last time I checked, Lenovo does not put stickers on your system that say "warranty void if screw removed" or anything like that.
So go on ahead, replace your screen if you can find a compatible one, its your machine and if the job is done competently and all the proper specifications (Power draw/etc) match up, then there is no reason for your warranty to be voided.

I did this on my T400, and it was quite easy. There's a writeup on this forum somewhere (search my userID) describing the process... if you're competent and careful, shouldn't be a big deal UNLESS there is something fundamentally different between my T400 and your 410s (which there could be...)