Modding a Vostro 3750 laptop to have touch screen. Looking for advice.

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3ICE
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Modding a Vostro 3750 laptop to have touch screen. Looking for advice.

Unread post by 3ICE »

I posted this to http://en.community.dell.com/support-fo ... dpost.aspx but it might not get approved. Saving a copy at my own forum, for now:
Hi,

I'm looking for any advice I can get regarding the installation of a touch screen panel into my Dell Vostro 3750 laptop. Willing to spend over 100$.
This will be a Christmas project so I have time to prepare every detail.

Please recommend brands, products, assembly/installation techniques or even a full guide. I've never done this before. But I take apart laptops and PCs as a hobby and for a living both, so I'm not inexperienced either. Feel free to use technical jargon.

Technical specifications and my special needs:
• The current screen is the default that came with the machine: 17.3" LED.
• I'm not sure whether I need to buy a 17" or 17.3" touch screen kit for that. Windows 8 makes heavy use of edge and corner pixels, so I'll probably go with 17.3". Get better 1:1 mapping that way too. On the other hand 17" would not flow over the edges. Help me decide?
• Also, here is a mysterious discrepancy: The screen dimensions say it's 15.5"×8.98", but then sqrt(15.5^2 + 8.98^2) says that'd be 17.9". Probably because it's not an edge-to-edge display panel, but thought I'd mention it just to be thorough.
• I'd prefer a resistive touch screen, as capacitive doesn't work with gloves and my favorite stylus. But it's just a preference, not requirement -- capacitive is fine if that's what you have experience with.
• I reside in Hungary, Europe, so international shipping is probably not avoidable.
• If I could also upgrade the current WXGA++ (1600×900) to a nice full HD 1080p (1920×1080) resolution during this project, then I'd be very happy. Even if it costs me another 100$.

Misc note - Almost everything is modded out already in this beast of a machine. I changed:
Wireless card to a much higher powered one so the hotspot it generates can go through the concrete and loam walls in my house all the way to my tablet in the bathroom.
Swapped out my DVD drive for an SSD with a cheap Optical bay adapter. It's my primary drive now. Turned the original drive into a portable external DVD burner, no case.
Got an i7 CPU recently. The i5 just wasn't enough for streaming and playing some of my more CPU-intensive games at once.
Added custom cooling all around the inside of the laptop. Just some thin flat heat pipes and heat spreaders. During peak performance it was always hovering at 90°C before, down to 70°C after this mod.
9 cell battery which bumps up the form factor a bit (stick out the back) but lasts 9+ hours instead of the default 2-4.
And I added more RAM and storage of course.
The only thing left to mod after touch screen will be a GPU upgrade, or the hooking up of a spare dual GPU build I have externally, but then I'd be using three to four graphics cards which sounds silly. (Integrated + dedicated + externals)

I will be rating all useful posts 5 stars and clicking like on them. And if you leave your paypal address, at the time of completion I will donate 25$, 10$ and 5$ to the top 3 most helpful posters respectively as a Christmas gift. You are doing research for me, so you might as well get paid for it. I hope donations are allowed here.

Thanks,
Daniel "3ICE" Berezvai
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3ICE
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Posts: 2629
Joined: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:34 pm
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Re: Modding a Vostro 3750 laptop to have touch screen. Looking for advice.

Unread post by 3ICE »

Approved!
community.dell.com/19528550

Edit: Never mind, I edited the first post and it's down for moderation review again... Lesson learned: Don't edit the first post.

Edit 2: It's finally back up! Same link as before.
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