I've had my 5000e for close to five years. I had an extended warrentee for four years so every time the hinge failed I would have a repair tech come out and replace the hinge. This happened four or five times and on one occasion the fix only lasted about two months. Many or you have posted about this same problem and several have expressed concern about what to do after the warrentee expires. I too was concerned so waited to have the final fix done during the last week of the warrentee period.

 The reason that the hinge fails is that the plastic in the cover is too thin and a diagonal crack developes from the corner of the hinge to the edge of the panel. With repeated opening and closing of the lid, the crack widens and the lid gets real sloppy and won't stay in position. So after the last replacement of the hinge assembly, I epoxied a piece of black plastic about one inch by two inch and about an eighth inch thick on the outside lid cover over each hinge. I positioned the added piece so that it extended from the edge of the lid over the area where the crack would normally occur. Since I was doing this prior to the crack occurring, I could do it with the screen back in place on the laptop. If I had waited until the crack developed, I suppose that I would have had to remove the cover in order to clamp the crack shut while the epoxy cured. This will probably be the case with many of you who are just now wondering how to fix your loose hinges, now that the warrentee is gone.  The fix isn't pretty but it has worked well so far. I used an epoxy gel so that it would not run down into the hinge and really mess things up. The gel also goes on thicker so that you needn't get a real precise fit between the added pieces of plastic and the existing lid. I hope that this will help some of you get a few more miles out of your old 5000e.