My daughter's Dell Inspiron 1150 fell victim once again to bargain basement laptop design and ended up
flat lined on my desk this weekend with its guts completely removed.

The Patient

The culprit was a week power receptacle that popped off the mother board and needed to be resoldered for a second time. 

The culprit

Unfortunately when my daughter has the laptop on her lap, the power cable sometimes gets upward pressure applied from her legs bumping the power cord.  With only weak solder holding the receptacle on the main board its no wonder this thing has popped off twice now.  My IBM Thinkpad would never have this problem, the receptacle on it is firmly attached to not only the mother board, like this Dell, but also the case - freaking brilliant!

Laptop Completely Disassembled

This time was going to be different.  This time I dremiled the case to make a bit more room for a new metal reinforcement piece on the top of the receptacle to provide support for the receptacle from upward forces popping it off the mother board.

Reinstalled Receptacle With New Reinforcement

If you look really closely you can see a tiny piece of shiny metal sticking out above the power receptacle, this is the new reinforcement piece I soldered to the top of the receptacle.