'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

I had to replace an inverter on my old laptop a couple of years ago. Or same thing as you - inverter was slightly cheaper and easier to replace, so I opted for a $10 delivery from Ebay.

And it worked.

I have NO CLUE why a plasma discharge lamp would be more reliable than a solid state switch and transformer. Not too much opportunity for the latter to fail. Lots of opportunity for the former to, since it's essentially semi-controlled high voltage fire within a tube.