The Glossification of the T500 Screen

[Duck Noodle Soup]

After being, like many others, finally fed up with the T500 screen, and being inspired by related successful attempts on different thinkpads (here and ojosch's post here), I decided to replace the screen on my T500.

My goal was to replace the WXGA LED matte screen with a glossy WSXGA+ CCFL display, since matte had been such a let down on the stock display and I figured might as well to up the resolution. Lenovo's parts documentation for T500 lists the cable for both the WXGA and WSXGA+ displays as the same, even across LED and CCFL displays. This contrasts with the T400, which Lenovo lists as having different cables depending on the backlighting style and presence of a camera.

With this in mind, I used eBay to search for the proper LCD panel and inverter. I used part numbers 41W1338 for the inverter, and 42T0423 for the screen since it gave many results that were listed as glossy. Note that the ebay seller for the display seemed to be a storefront for Bliss Computers, but it was cheaper on the ebay listing than at the seller's website.

The screen replacement itself ended up being a total success, and I did not totally dismantle the base of the laptop as described in the Hardware Maintenance Manual, rather opting to only take apart the display area (as described here). However during the installation process I had the magnesium frame (item 4 of the figure) shatter at the hinge connection area.

When taking off the front plastic cover to the display, screws must be removed which also attach the magnesium frame to the hinge. With this reduced amount of screws, I believe too much pressure was placed on to few of screw connection points, causing the magnesium frame to break. Unfortunately, in order to remove the display and attached brackets, yet another screw must be removed from the hinges and inevitably pressure will the placed against the frame to replace the display. Because of this, I would recommend either unscrewing and totally detaching the magnesium frame from the hinges and laying it down before taking off the back plastic cover and proceeding to remove the display and/or having someone/something other than the laptop hinge hold up the magnesium frame while removing the display.

That being said, I was able to find a replacement magnesium frame. Replacing that was sort of an annoyance, since the wireless antennas and associated tape had to be removed and placed on the new frame. Even though disassembly of the screen area was not exactly as in the HMM, I was pretty surprised that the magnesium frame broke and would think a stronger material would have been able to survive.

Despite all the setbacks, the end result is pretty great. The display is much better than the stock one, which was extremely washed out and had heavy backlight bleeding. The Monitor Asset Manager utility lists the display as AUO187B. This display subjectively doesn't seem as great as the ones I've seen on MacBooks, but it's good enough, given the improvement over the crappy stock one. Interestingly, Lenovo's W500 parts list for the WUXGA display cites the same display assembly cable. Presumably, one could make a T500 at WUXGA, though the going rate for a compatible screen seems to be $375-$700.

Also, I noticed that attached to the wireless antennas were squares of aluminum foil looking things that were adhesively stuck to the magnesium frame. These got slightly crinkled when I moved them over to the new magnesium frame; and inevitably the adhesive of the foil thingys wasn't as sticky to the new frame, since it had already been used on the old one. Anyone care to speculate if this would noticeably hurt wireless reception?