Microsoft Surface Laptop scores zero for reparability

[Tabbykatze]

EG-RL 99/44 only covers things that deviate from product description, not expectations. In other words: if you product's battery lasts 1 hour instead of 3 hours after purchase, you get a replacement. But if the battery degraded normally from daily use, you have to rely on goodwill to get a replacement.

Thanks for the clarification! But if it suddenly died/dropped within the warranty lifetime, surely it can be argued to get a replacement?

[Rubarb]

one of the reasons I don't buy anything like this, if you can't take it apart whats the point?

Swear MS has lost the plot big time

[wazzickle]

if you can't take it apart whats the point?

Work, play, facebook, emails, etc etc, the way that 98% of the laptop market use their laptop

[Tabbykatze]

one of the reasons I don't buy anything like this, if you can't take it apart whats the point?

Swear MS has lost the plot big time

Quite a high percentage of users would never need or want to take it apart. It's a consumer product, they consume it then throw it away and get a new one

[big_hairy_rob]

Cheap and throw-away is becoming the mainstay of the laptop industry. I guess that it's just a sign of the times; I just hope that they are safe to dispose of and recycle.

Plus repairability has been a big issue on other devices for years (apple soldering RAM, tablets) and people do not complain in their droves about these...
#MountainOutOfMolehill

[whatif]

I'd be particularly annoyed that the battery replacement is "difficult and dangerous," as this is a laptop that Panos Pannay said would be give good service for a student throughout the whole of their university studies. That's at least 3 or 4 years isn't it?

Why would you need to replace a laptop battery within 4 years? I've had my current laptop about 3 and a half years and the battery's still absolutely fine ... I'd be VERY surprised if it failed within the next six months...

Working in a school you'd be surprised at how poor some laptops batteries have become. We've entire series of laptops where the battery won't last an hour (down from perhaps 3 hours when bought) yet we had some Acer laptops from ~2008/2009 where we only needed to replace the battery a couple of years back (and they were refurbs!).

The cheap Lenovo and HP laptops are particularly bad in my experience. It's almost as though they want you to replace the whole laptop regularly...

I had a couple of HP laptops many years ago (mid 2009), the last one was a top-of-the-range DV9000 with all the bells and whistles (even included a digital TV tuner and 2x remotes). It was superseded shortly after buying and HP never updated any drivers so still stuck with Vista to keep everything working (about once every 2 years I do a fresh factory reset to keep it speedy). When asked about updating to Win 7, all HP said was to buy a new laptop.
So their intention was already shown way back in late 2009.
I have never even thought of buying a HP product again, I also advise people away from this brand.
Must include though, the old HP DV9205TX is still working fine and apart from upgrading the HDD's to SSD's and doubling the RAM to 4GB (these made a huge difference to performance), the only thing I have had to replace/repair is the battery (3x times and needs another new one now). At least I have been able to get my money's worth out of it. :-)

Cheap and throw-away is becoming the mainstay of the laptop industry.

Plus repairability has been a big issue on other devices for years (apple soldering RAM, tablets) and people do not complain in their droves about these…

#MountainOutOfMolehill

I agree that throwaway products are becoming far too prevalent nowadays, but I am not sure if I would call the new MS Surface laptop a cheap product with present prices starting at around A$1200 for the lower end i5 version and going to over A$4200 for a high-end version (i7 1TB SSD 16GB - https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/d/commercial-microsoft-surface-book/93R8P1BXV1BG/2V3Z?gclid=CJKulcWL2tQCFQwmvQodMXEPNQ&s_kwcid=AL!4249!3!189010908644!!!g!312418614696!&WT.mc_id=au_d atafeed_pla_google_pointitsem_surface&ef_id=WNAJpgAAAGYzlhTg:20170625225448:s).

As for the fact that apple has been doing it's best to stop any chance of owner repairs or upgrades (examples - replacing a battery, no micro SD slot), I am aware of a lot of people who complain about it and these people don't buy a fruity product because of it. I have many friends who have swapped from these to Android products, yet I have only one friend who has gone from Android to apple - only because their work gives them a new one for free. It is just a shame to see companies like Samsung try to follow apple's lead.


After reading the Hexus article above, there is no way I would even consider purchasing one of these!
Although if someone were to give me one for free - is a whole other situation. :-)

[mapesdhs]

If ever there was a good example of the worst aspects of "consumer", this is it. Trying to recall now when "consumer" first started being used as the normal way to refer to the buying public. Pretty sure it wasn't much in use in the 1980s. The very word oozes a tone of waste. But then, given the way the masses tend to behave, and the rise of the me-me-me SJW generation, I doubt any other word would have been as suitable for modern attitudes to product purchsing and ownership. Just look at the staggering number of phones thrown away each year. People who make use of local Freecycle groups are like single leaves falling in a hurricane.