I've had this laptop (an Acer Aspire 2025WLMi) since the summer of 2004, right before I headed to college that fall. It's been fantastic -- no Windows crashes or reinstalls, no viruses, no spyware...perfect.

Unfortunately within 2 minutes of taking it out of the box when it originally arrived, I realized it had a slight manufacturing defect -- the snaps to hold the lid in place when it's closed don't line up properly with the holes in the body of the laptop. This is easily resolved by pushing the lid slightly backwards as I'm closing the laptop so everything lines up. No issues for almost 4 years, although recently it has been getting more and more difficult to close.

I'm sure many of you know that over time with laptops, the lubricant for the hinges of the lid slowly wears out with each open/close cycle and the lid doesn't move as smoothly as it did when it was new. On my machine I can feel the hinges not want to move....not moving.....*creak* as the lid closes and the hinges finally move.

Earlier in the library today, the left hinge finally gave out. I'm wondering if pushing it backwards over the past 3.5 years slowly wore away at it; I'm sure over the past few days it was cracking, but today it finally broke. The piece of metal on the hinge snapped as I was closing my laptop.



The broken pieces of the hinge, plus the LCD cable and antenna cables for the wireless, both going into the lid:


Took everything apart, managed to take the hinge off, and put everything back together so now the right hinge is supporting the weight of the whole lid...thus I'm sure it will fail at some point as well, especially now that it's the only piece holding the lid to the laptop.


The broken hinge attachment that connects to the LCD:



Spot where the hinge used to be:



How the hinge correctly attaches (right hinge):



Everything disassembled:




Electronically there's nothing wrong with the system...this was a mechanical failure. The hinge is so hard to move I have to use a set of pliers to get it to rotate -- too hard to move with my hands. I wonder if Acer would be willing to sell me some new hinges.


...maybe I should have posted this in the Soapbox.

3/11/2008 3:37:43 PM

let me look through my old laptop grave yard and see if I have anything that *might* work

3/11/2008 3:39:30 PM

same thing happened to my old old Dell Inspiron 4500 (PIII 450Mhz)

bought replacement hinges on eBay for cheap, replaced them myself

Left Hinge:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Acer-Aspire-2000-Left-LCD-Bracket-w-Hinge_W0QQitemZ130201589450QQihZ003QQ

Right Hinge
http://cgi.ebay.com/Acer-Aspire-2000-Right-LCD-Bracket-w-Hinge_W0QQitemZ130199267765QQcmdZViewItem

[Edited on March 11, 2008 at 3:43 PM. Reason : .]

3/11/2008 3:40:30 PM

^ Thanks!!! I had no idea you could buy individual parts and pieces like that on Ebay (then again I don't shop there much).

Those say they're for the 2000 series -- they also have the 2010 and the 2020. I hope they work on mine. If you look in the 2nd picture you can see what mine currently looks like. It isn't quite what this place is selling but it looks similar. Might as well replace the right one too since it'll probably die at some point as well.

[Edited on March 11, 2008 at 3:57 PM. Reason : ]

3/11/2008 3:56:45 PM

Alright I sent that place a message asking if they'd fit. It looks like the hinges on those brackets are reversed from mine. If they don't fit apparently this place is an Acer dealer so maybe they can grab what I need...

3/11/2008 4:12:07 PM

you're right you'll want the 2020 version. good luck.

3/11/2008 5:27:03 PM