R61i LCD/Display on the fritz; Diagnostic Gurus Needed

[IBMorBust]

I posted another thread about this, and Richk promptly and helpfully responded, but I jumped the gun so to speak (see below), so if a mod (including Rich) wants to kill the old thread, that's fine (long story short - I wanted to see if I could swap a LCD from a T41 onto my R61, but I have a T42, not a T41, as a salvage laptop, so it's moot - which Rich pointed out).

My R61i is nearly 4 years old and sees heavy use.

Within the last several weeks, it's developed a display problem, and here is the chronology:

1) About 3 weeks ago, the display started to go black instantly, but would come back on within a second or 2 at most. I chalked it up to a power cord problem, it only happened 1x or 2x a day at most, there was no lost data or other problems, and the screen was as bright as ever.

2) Within the last week, I noticed the infamous pinkish/reddish hue or tint on the left side of the bottom corner of my display. It sometimes would last for a few seconds on start up, it sometimes would last for a minute or more, but it would go away, and didn't spread or get darker. That problem is minimal, now, as in less intense than it was previously (there's still some pink tint from time to time, but it is very minimal now, being less noticeable than it was before).

3) Within the last couple of days, my screen has begun to dim and flicker, for lack of a better word, at a fast frequency, to the point where it makes it difficult to read text. This problem rarely goes away, except for a brief moment here and there where the display seems to come back for maybe 30 seconds to a minute at full brightness and no flickering. Worse, though, the display, when flickering, will now often go to instant black out condition, and I have to reboot the laptop of hit the function toggle/on off display key to get the display to come back on, which it does, until it goes dark again (usually this happens about once or twice per hour).

From what I've read, the pink/reddish tint is a sign of a CCFL or backlight that's going bad, although the flickering and black out display could be attributable to a bad inverter.

I have a lot of important data on this notebook and don't want to replace it unless the fix for this condition is going to be expensive to the point where upgrading to a new T420 or X220 (for about $700 to $800 on sale) just makes more sense.

I anticipate some will say to order an inverter and see if this resolves the problem, because it's inexpensive and relatively easy to replace as a DIY, while others will say the infamous red/pink tint is a near certain sign that the CCFL is dying, and that replacing the CCFL is a delicate and time consuming task, whereby the sandwich of the panel has to be essentially taken apart (and that he CCFL bulb is fragile).

The other option is to replace the LCD itself, and it appears that these are available for about $90 to $120, although not from Lenovo (and only glossy screens, based on what I've been able to find so far).

The LCD is a WXGA 1280 x 800 non-glossy, 14.1" TFT.

What sayeth you, wise counsel of the Thinkpad Forums?

Any and ALL advice, recommendations and opinions are appreciated!

[ZaZ]

The cable and inverter are pretty cheap. The LCD or the board are going to be more expensive. You cold try the cable and inverter first. If that doesn't work, use it until it's unusable, sell the parts and move onto the X220/T420.

[RealBlackStuff]

The only other laptop where you would find a matching LCD would be the T61 or R61 with 14.1" Widescreen.
NO T40/T41/T42/T43/R50/R51/R52 or its /p-versions were ever made with a Widescreen LCD!