Update: January 16, 2008—Mike Bukowski, a Technical Analyst from our Dell Customer Advocate team recently published a post that discusses other potential causes of vertical lines on notebook displays.
Earlier this year, members of our Customer Advocate team posted a message that still resides front and center on a site called dellverticalline.com. That note says we were aware of some user complaints about certain notebook displays. Since then, the Customer Advocate team has coordinated with other Dell groups to help figure out what was happening with some 17" notebook displays.
Here's what they found: on some 17” LCD displays shipped with Dell Inspiron 9200, 9300 and Dell XPS Gen 2 notebooks, a one pixel wide vertical line may develop across the LCD screen over time. Systems that may be affected by this issue shipped from Nov. 2004 through Oct 2006.
Here’s what we’re doing: for affected systems, Dell is offering to replace any LCD that develops a vertical line within three years of purchase, at no charge for parts and labor. Also, Dell will offer refunds to customers who paid Dell to replace defective LCDs with this issue.
Dell values our customers, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
We will send letters to all potentially affected customers whose systems are out of warranty. We have already begun mailing them—letters will be sent to our customers at their last known address.
To summarize the key criteria:
- This potential issue applies to Inspiron 9200, 9300 and XPS Gen 2 models only
- Only these three systems shipped from Nov. 2004 to October 2006 are potentially affected
Not all systems are affected. U.S. customers who are experiencing this issue, or who have paid to replace an LCD for this issue can call 1-800-624-9896.
For customers outside the U.S., please contact Dell by phone:
- Go to support.dell.com
- Choose your country or region from the drop-down list
- Choose Contact Us
- Choose Technical Support
- Choose Call Technical Support
Note: I've amended the previous two paragraphs with updated information. Rather than strikethroughs, I edited the original text to help eliminate any confusion.