That kinda rules out extreme thermal shifts... Any other ideas, or are we gonna stick with just lousy construction?

I just found out that if I turn the brightness down one notch from max, the flicker stops. I'm just going to deal with a slightly dimmer screen for now if this works well

I'm thinking it also at least partially has to do with vibration and movement within the machine. Hitting those brightness keys will cause things inside to vibrate due to your touch. The left wire on my LCD invertor was EXTREMELY sensitive to movement until I taped the hell out of it. Now the flicker is a bit better, but it comes back occasionally.

Lowering brightness a notch or two helps a lot. Annoying though. I want full brightness sometimes.

yeah, it's not cool having whites look gray

Well, just to let you folks know I installed my new inverter and it seems to be fixed for now (2) hours and no flicker. I know I have said this hundred times before. It only took about 20-30 minutes to flicker before and I am patiently waiting for it to do it again.

I kind of want to say I hope this does not fix the problem, because that means we will all have to shell out money for a new inverter. Whereas a simple wiring harness revision I feel would be a less expensive fix.

I will keep you guys posted on this.

Thanks for you time and money compman- it is greatly appreciated!
Is this the same model inverter?

Yes it is, I could not find any wiring diagrams to use a different one. If this is the weak link, I will then look into finding a different inverter and possibly a backlight.

According to a few auctions on ebay, many LCD panels use the same exact backlight reguardless of size. So being I got my inverter for a 15", it is the same part# as the 15.4".

I do hate to tear my LCD apart too much as I still have a warrenty, the double sided tape will wear out, and they may be able to tell. I just absolutly hate sending it away and being without it and I also hate knuckleheads putting their hands inside my equipment.

This actually be good news in such that warranties to eventually run out. If your experiment works - $50 or so down the road won't be such a big deal if it means restoring the machines use.
Unless we all decide to bring back disco - and use our machines as strobe lights

Well, I left the lappy on all night at full brightness without a screen saver and it did not flicker this morning. With the old inverter it would not be able to run full brightness at all after 2 hours. Not a single flicker.

I will take it for a nice ride in the car and see if I can get it to do it again. This is when it does it bad.

Now for the million dollar question, assuming this fixes mine, would any of you be willing to spend $54 to test my theory? Mainly kaido. The reason I say this is because his acted up shortly after he got it new which I find very wierd.

Comp- I remember you had pasted a thread somewhere about SAGER owners experiencing flicker issues. If I correct, they sid that it came from running their screen at max brightness over time. I highly suspect that we have the same issue in that the inverter can't handle the load (poor design). I would reccomend that folks keep the brghtness down a couple of notchess to prolong the life of their backlight.
i would be curious to hear from those without the flicker to mention what they normally set their brightness level to (thunder..this means you )

Yes, I'm willing to shell out for a fix. I can't send mine back to the factory...it's, ah, a bit apparent that I opened it lol. I'm sure it would be hideously expensive to get fixed from the factory (plus I just like screwing around with hardware lol). I did get a camera, a Canon PowerShot A75, which takes much better closeups than my mom's Kodak does, so I will be able to document the procedure. Unfortunately the lens sounds kind of funny and the backlight is a bit screwy and I am sending it in for repair, so I won't have access to it for a couple weeks. I think I'll wait a couple weeks to make sure the inverter really does the fix anyway...everything I've tried so far hasn't worked for more than a day lol. Compman55, if you could give us the basics of the "operation," I'd appreciate it.

Oh, one change I did notice last night...usually when I boot up my laptop, the bottom of the screen glows brighter (I guess from the backlight) against the black Windows boot screen. Last night, it wasn't there, but the lights were on the right and left sides. Kind of strange...

Other than this silly flicker problem, I've had absolutely no problems with my laptop. I just love it to death. It's great having a powerhouse that I can carry anywhere. The screen is soooo beautiful (especially at max brightness...lol).

It has been kept on full brightness for a good 95%+ of it's life. The LCD is on for an average of, hrrmmm, I guess about 6 hours a day. Keeping my fingers crossed for sure. I hate even mentioning anything about lack of flicker. I cringe every time I hit "submit"

Zero how the h#$% did you remeber that. That was a while ago. Here is the thread:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread...hlight=flicker

Now, if peng lord can shed some light on what wires do what on the input side of the inverter, we may be able to replace the inverter with one from another computer. They are pretty much all the same except for the number of wires and position. Most inverters can be made to fit in our laptops.

When I get mine back from service, I might be willing to meter it again, I should have written my findings down and tested it at all the different settings the first time I was playing with it.

I just got done browsing the voodoo forums and guess what, the m:860 has the same flicker as ours. Turn out to be the inverter.

Mine was good for the ride in the car. Not a single flicker yet.