Broken key on Dell Inspiron 1100

[sswingle]

I have a Dell Inspiron with a key broken off. The key itself works, but there is no way to reattach it because the little plastic thing that attaches the key to the computer is snapped in half.

I have two questions, one, has anyone ever gotten parts like this from Dell? I am going to call Monday but thought it would be nice to know of other's experiences. My fear is they'll try to sell me a whole keyboard for some insanely high price. Second, would anyone happen to have a dead Inspiron they could just mail me a key from.

Thanks!!

 

[InlineFive]

Call them and see what they say. I once got a new 2.5" hard drive from them (valued at $80) for free because my old one was starting to click. I converted the old one into a mobile backup drive.

-Por

 

[wischeez]

Check out this page:

Dell Forums

 

[sswingle]

Thanks, but I didn't get anywhere. After an hour of searching, I just found lots of messages of people wanting to buy, and a Dell Moderator saying to search the forum because there are people supposedly selling somewhere out there, and then I come across another message from the same moderator saying any messages pertaining to selling anything will be deleted because its not allowed on their forums. The more I have to deal with Dell, the more I hate them...

 

[arsbanned]

Call Customer Support and ask them. They can't read your mind. I'm not saying they'll respond in the way you'd like (what, they pay you, ship it free with a brick of gold included FREE!) but the only way you're going to find out is to ASK.

 

[Mermaidman]

If all else fails, or as a stopgap until you find a replacement, can you replace the broken key with another, but seldom used, key? Or go to a Dell retail outlet and "borrow" one (j/k)

 

[Confused]

If it's still under warranty, send them an email, or call them. I did this, and they sent out an engineer a couple of days later to swap the keyboard


Garry

 

[sswingle]

Its not under warranty anymore Everyone on the dell forums, including dell moderators, are saying that dell does not sell individual keys, just entire keyboards, so fvck them.

I found some on ebay for $30, I'll probably just get one of those, and then I'll have lots of spares.

 

[Kaylya]

You could try taking it into some general computer service place. It's a relatively trivial thing to replace one key, assuming you have the key. It's happened to two of my friends (on IBM's; one was completely random, and one was due to a Game Cube falling on the keyboard), but then we get our laptops + support through our university.