hello and thank you, royan.  screen ordered last night :).

while dell has a great laptop, they are realllllllllly tough on their warranty's.  even though it appears that the screen installed under warranty for free failed in a couple of months, there is no warranty on the part itself, so when my overall warranty expired, so did the 'repair'.

turns out the person who did the initial repair also left one of the 6 screws out AND stripped one of the 5 he did replace.  thank GOD for this forum, as it appears i will be using it extensively.  as is in most things, doing it yourself is the best way to do it right.

merry christmas!

berbes