I have an old Dell Inspiron 3500 that I have really grown to love. The computer's a tank, and after a couple upgrades it'll run about anything under the sun.
I was sad when the left mouse button gave up and died on me. It went from a nice soft smooth click to a hard mashing in order to get it to work. I took the cdrom out (directly under the button) and got some insight as to how it works. The button is composed of 2 large tabs on the top, which are stuck down to the plastic surface of the laptop. it also has two small hooks on the bottom that keep the button from hinging up above the surface of the laptop.
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In the end, after extended use, the 'plastic hinge' broke. I needed to come up with a replacement. I tried out super glue at first, and it worked really well for about a week, then broke again. Super glue doesn't have enough flex.
After a few other trials, I ended up putting a bead of glue gun glue toward the top where the hinge is.
Initially, the button was rather stiff, and I was planning on ripping it apart one more time to try something different. After a day or so, the button loosened up, and now it works as well as it did before it broke. Its been going strong for 5 months now.