Inspiron LED "package" size?

how do you remove the plastic panel above teh keybaord to get at the LEDs?

Any kind of colored light filters generally won't work all that great on LEDs.

Some thoughts:

LEDs by their very nature only emit very specific wavelengths of light. They do not and cannot emit all of the colors of the visible light spectrum like, say, most any typical untinted incandescent light bulb can.

So any way, getting back OT with color filters and light, color filters work by prohibiting any colors that are not present in the filter from passing through said filter. For example, a pure red tint filter only allows the "red" wavelengths of white light to freely pass through unhindered. Any other wavelengths of white light common to green, blue, purple will be filtered out. IOW a filter *removes* certain wavelenghts of light--it can't add anything.

So the problem here is that since blue LEDs only emit blue light, a red color filter won't be able to filter out the red wavelengths out of blue light as there aren't any red wavelengths of light to begin with. So instead of getting purple light, one'll get dim muddy blue light.

That all said, real purple light via LEDs can be created solely with LEDs without any sort of filters at all in one of two ways:

1) use a pair of LEDs, one red and blue of the same brightness, and operate both simultaneously pointed at the same optical target. The result will be purple light.

2) procure an actual purple LED, which while currently quite rare do in fact actually exist. The purple light is produced via the chemical composition of the LED's semiconductor diode--not via color filters or phosphors.

Note that white LEDs also do exist but are either:

1) a tightly packed trio of pure red, green, and blue LEDs.

2) a blue LED with a yellow phosphorescent coating.

A type 1) white LED can produce most every color of light via color modulating the output of any combination of its constituent red/green/blue LEDs. No color filters are needed to do this either.

So a white LED of this type can produce purple light by simply outputting only red and blue light which the human eye will perceive as purple--this method is identical to the aforementioned use of discrete red and blue LEDs.

A type 2) white LED *can't* produce every color of light since its not actually producing pure white light to begin with. Using a color filter with this type of LED will tend to produce less than desirable results.

meekus has a lot of good info. one way of getting "purple" is to use an ultraviolet LED. while it emits UV, it does emit enough visible purple that it looks like a purple LED, but then again, after awhile and if you look directly into it, it's harmful for your eyes. one thing i'd be somewhat concerned with in changing around the colors of the LEDs in the panel is the voltages they require. okay, nevermind. just looked up the forward voltages of the blue and green and they are basically the same (3.3V), but if you were to say replace it with a yellow or red or UV, etc, they required voltage is different, and you could have problems with that.

I dont have much to comment about your LED situation but this was just funny Heres your sign