I recently returned from holiday to find my Laptop PC - a Dell Inspiron 1501 which was about 16 months old, and of course out of warranty, would not power-up. I found out through an online forum that this was a fairly common problem with this machine which meant a main board replacement, and that Dell were not admitting to any production errors, and therefore no comeback.

I contacted Dell to find out how much they would charge to repair it and was advised that as I was a valued customer they would do it with a 20% discount for £245. I had already sourced a replacement card on ebay for £120 so I told them to stuff it and I replaced it myself.

I intend to put the faulty board onto ebay to see if anyone will buy it for spares, but before doing so I thought I would check out arrse to see if anyone else has had the same or similar problem and might be willing to share the experience, or might be interested in a spare card going cheap.