A broken hinge on a laptop is VERY common. These break easily when the laptop is used roughly or is picked up and moved around by holding the screen while open. This causes a few problems as when the hinge breaks you need to get it fixed. Otherwise your screen will simply fall back and forth and never stand up, making it difficult to use without some sort of mirror.
Take the picture on the left for example. Mr Stevens from Dianella. He brought his computer in all the way from Dianella (a whole 13 minutes drive away) to have the hinge swapped over. This is not as simple a job as you (and we) would hope.
The image is from the base of the laptop and you see the 3 black parts in the centre? That is where the hinge screws in. They should look like the others on the picture. To replace those 3 little broken bits, we have to replace the base of the laptop.
But fear not. This kind of laptop repair is not all that expensive and is the better option over buying a new laptop, unless that was what you wanted in the end.
The fix
To fix it we replaced the whole base of his computer. It was cheap, fast and far better than buying a new computer, installing all your programs, getting them all set up and then moving all your data across. It just isn’t necessary.