VERY DARK SCREEN

[hockeysticks]

My Panasonic Let's Note CF-W5KW8AXR laptop' screen intermittently goes very very dark.  I can just barely see the icons enough to properly shutdown or restart. 

It has been doing this for a couple of days.  At this very minute, the screen light has returned.  It has been coming and going regularly for a couple of days.  We spoke to the Panasonic service center and they said that the problem is either (1) the LCG or (2) the inverter board.  The former being over $700 to repair while the latter as much as $350. 

Again, it comes and goes and the screen is just barely visible with a bit of hard work / squinting. 

What must it be?  It is my 2nd laptop to do this.  The other is a Toshiba Tecra with exactly the same symptoms.

[Salmon Trout]

Those can't be US dollars?

[hockeysticks]

I converted Japanese yen into USD.  So, yes, that is approx. in USD.

[Salmon Trout]

Those are high prices. Here in Britain, One would expect to pay one third to one half of those prices for a typical laptop. Possibly your laptop is special in some way? It is not a model sold in Europe. However, unless a laptop is almost new, the cost of a major repair can be greater than its value. Even for a cheap brand like Dell. I agree that the inverter board may be involved, or else the backlight. I am a little surprised if the LCD has to be replaced completely, unless the backlight is integral and cannot be replaced separately. Maybe a new computer would be a better investment.

How important is the portable aspect? You could buy an external LCD monitor for much less than $700.