So my mom dropped her Surface RT and left it with me to do whatever with it. As you can see in the picture the screen is completely cracked but the display works as does everything else.
Microsoft offered to replace the screen for 330€, which is completely ridiculous and now I don't know what to do with it. I also have another one that is completely fine for myself and gets used very rarely, so...
I have thought about buying a replacement screen on Ebay and repair it myself but I've never done it before.
The glass panel is the digitizer (handels your touch imputs), it only costs like 30 $ but unfortunately its glued the the LCD panel underneath and of course is a pain to remove.
You could remove the LCD+digitizer and try gently getting the digitizer off with a credit card or so, remove the glue afterwards and then glue on the new digitizer without destroying anything or getting dust etc. between the layers (will take some time and might not be perfect, only do it if you have some spare time and want to save some money).
You could buy a LCD panel + digitizer (not only the LCD panel, your LCD panel is fine) for around 100$ more and put that on.
You could find someone on ebay or so who repairs tablets for cheaper then MS.
You could sell the parts or the whole thing on ebay.
....or you could just remove the digitizer, put some black isolating band over the edges and enjoy your new ghetto rt with a bluetooth mouse xD.
Personally id try to replace the digitizer, but only because Im a cheapskate and like to tinker. Your best move would probably be to buy a new screen+attached digitizer and just plug that in.
In any case, you should watch some teardowns/reapair videos on youtube before you take the surface apart so you dont break anything.
Get thee to https://www.ifixit.com/ and go through their repair guide, but I warn you the Surface is an unholy mess to take apart.
General Complete Teardown: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Teardown/11275
The phrase "Built for the landfill" was used about the Surface Pro, so that tells you a lot about the build of these things. That said I love taking things apart so I would do it for fun.
I would repair it IF you are up to the challenge and are INTERESTED in doing so. The price on them has dropped a lot, and I would probably cost you more to fix it than get a new one. I would pull your info and and sell it to someone that wants to fix it.... maybe they have a broken one with a perfectly good screen?
the asus t100 in on sale at walmart for $285 right now and that has better battery life and full windows 8.1... and comes with office.
Ok, thanks for all the input. You guys encouraged me to try it, so I took it apart. Went better than I thought. I still think that Windows RT was not the best idea Microsoft has ever had, but the Surface RT is one hell of a well build, solid device. I f they had sold it with "real" Windows on it as a cheaper alternative to the Surface Pro, it would have gone through the roof. Even with Windows RT on it it's still a good device for work use.
So now I'm going to purchase a new display and digitizer and reassemble it. I'll keep you updated.