Dell :: Cut The Center Out Of My M1340 Edge-to-edge Plastic Screen, Its An Antiglare Beneath

The thing they call "edge to edge glass" which is really just plastic above an ordinary screen. The thing is, that the screen under that edge to edge plastic is a nice anti-glare screen, no kidding! You can see this if you take your laptop in sunlight and tilt it the right way.

So what's happening is you're getting the worst part of an anti-glare screen (reduced contrast ratio) plus the worst part of a glossy screen (unless you have a really pretty face).

I took the plastic thing off, cut along the black/clear border, pulled out the middle, and stuck the centerless border back on the laptop.

Result? THIS SCREEN IS FANTASTIC. Yeah ok, of course I would say that. But if you knew me, you'd know that was way out of the ordinary and really meant that THIS SCREEN IS FANTASTIC.

One thing you may not have considered is that the screen in its default position has yet another flaw, both sides of that glossy plastic thing are glossy, so some of the light coming from the screen is reflected back to the screen, and as you know light reflected onto the screen has a yellowish tint. That is my guess as to why the whites on this screen are really really white now, and the screen is much brighter. This also explains why other 300nit screens used to look so much brighter than this.

I will have more pics when I am able to charge the battery to my good camera. If anyone has any questions about removing that plastic thing I'll be happy to answer your questions, it's actually pretty easy. For those interested, here is how I did it:

1. I removed the "star" head screws, this was accomplished not with a special star head screw driver, but an ordinary flat head precision screw driver.

2. Put some paper over a hacksaw blade to avoid scratching, wedged it under the plastic near the top where the camera is, and snapped out the first of the several lock-in points on along the top edge. I proceeded to detatch the rest of the top of the screen in this way.

3. Both the left and right sides were held on mostly by adhesive, the very edge point locks in slightly, but the efforts removing these sides are focused mainly on separating the adhesive bond.

4. I pulled upward on the plastic and it came right off, there seems to be no adhesive or lock-in points on the bottom side.

5. Using the center of the screen as a test area, I tested several cutting utilities and decided on the utility knife. To my surprise, the plastic was about 1mm thick.

6. I clamped the screen down to the table, with a straight edge positioned 1mm inward of the black line, to give headroom for errors.

7. I cut along these lines, and repeated step 6 for each side, and pushed out the center to reveal the border piece that now resembled a common laptop screen enclosure border.

8. I used a medium grit sand paper to bring the cut lines to meet the black lines, and finished it off with a fine grit sand paper.

9. I applied some electrical tape to the area between the edge of the screen itself, and the edge of the laptop on the right and left sides because there was light leakage, and then popped the border back on and screwed it down.

Found the charger! Here's the high res shots. They do *some* justice to the screen quality.