Last week, our son dropped his MacBook, killing its screen. It’s difficult for him to send packages from school, and he needed fairly quick turnaround, so last Friday, he had to schlep from Santa Cruz to the San Jose Apple Store to put it in for repair. It took him all day to get there and back, and of course it wasn’t covered under warranty. He had them ship it back here, so he could use it while he was home for Thanksgiving.

Apple had great turnaround on the service. The repaired MacBook was delivered here on Tuesday. The painful part: it was an $800 fix to replace the broken LCD.

I happened to be looking around for something related to my own MacBook today, and ran across ScreenTek, who sell replacement LCD screens, and have excellent, step-by-step illustrated instructions on how to swap out the screen. Turns out that it’s really not too scary a fix; all you need is a couple of Phillips screwdrivers. I figure I could do it in about an hour. The replacement screen can be purchased from them for $375. Saving $425 on the repair makes it worthwhile if your laptop is out of warranty, or suffers a non-covered failure.

And now, we’re going to make Sean purchase laptop insurance from Safeware, too.