Microsoft Surface Laptop Teardown
ifixit.com
ifixit.com
There's a tradeoff between repairable and bulky. Here's a repair job of mine.[1] This is restoring a Teletype Model 15 from the 1930s. These are completely reparable - every part can be removed without damage. IFixit would give it a score of 10. It's big, heavy, loud, and drips oil, but completely repairable.
[1] http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,43672.0.html
Ironic that it's Microsoft, not Apple that first produced a sealed, tamper-proof laptop.
That does seem to be the final destination as things become more and more tightly integrated. "System on module" seems to be where we are headed.
After all, you don't crack open your CPU to repair that bad L1 cache.
It would be nice to compromise on some sane boundaries though. Perhaps screen, "processing unit", and battery. I'd give up some thinness to mix and match those components to suit my use cases.
Manufacturers have much more leverage when the only reliable option the customer has is to buy a new one if the current one fails.
My hunch is that this will pave the way for smaller product manufacturers to spring up with better value for customers.
That's what the market wants. If the market wanted ClunkBox perpetual computer that was infinitely upgradeable, there would be an option out there.
(I'll admit though, the glue is kind of weird. But I guess a natural progression when "no one opens these things anyway")
I'm not so sure this is true. What kind of company would produce reliable hardware that you could maintain over decades? Where's the money in making something that high quality?
A company whose business model was renting out hardware or services requiring the hardware, rather than selling hardware.
But, yeah, that's not what your really looking for.
Many cheaper laptops still have replaceable RAM, WiFi, cell modem, SSD, optical drive, battery.
A few models still come with socketed, upgradable CPUs. These days the 14nm desktop CPUs are efficient enough for laptop use.
The hand rest on these are cloth. It's going to be disgusting after few months, let alone years.
In my case I bought a Dell Precision 5520, its an absolute beast with killer battery life too and is completely user serviceable. I expect this thing to easily last 5 years and it's not much thicker than a MacBook.
There are not many people aiming for my market segment because I suppose the money is in disposable hardware. But I can still dislike it.
That thing has a 512G SSD and 8G of ram now, which is definitely reasonable, but I think 2G of ram and 5.4k/RPM drives are not reasonable in 2017.
As a kid I would confidently open up any electronic device without worrying too much about breaking it. A radio, tv, toys, remote controlled devices, speakers, headphones, laptops, disk drives, etc. These days I do not find myself opening up electronic devices as much. More from them fear of breaking them or the hoops that I have to go through to do it.
That exploration really taught me valuable things.
I don't have kids yet, but if and when I do, I'd want them to open up anything that they are not sure how it works internally, under the shiny box. I am not sure if they will be as confident about opening up common device of their time be it a mac or an iPhone or a tablet or any such "tightly locked" device.
I hope I can build, nurture and keep their curiosity alive.
Right to repair is also usually centered around software, since that's the crux of the argument used by companies like John Deere. JD technically isn't telling people they can't repair things, just that they can't "hack" their software (an "IP infringement"), which so happens to be a necessary step in repairs.
I have a legal right to repair my own products or have a third party do it, but because the manufacturer is under no obligation to make it easy everyone gets screwed.
Practically, even if Microsoft did want to make the device disassemble friendly and was even willing to spend the engineering dollars to make that happen, I think they'd be turned away by the fact making a "polished" device that's easily disassembleable would increase failure rates. The bonded materials greatly increase strength over a set of spaced screws/latches into thin material.
All these higher end laptops all come with pretty decent warranties so for a couple hundred bucks you get it either repaired or swapped out. Then again, I'm a tone deaf American with a large amount of disposable income...
If you have to use the word /honestly/ in your communications, this leads readers to believe that the remainder of your information is falsehoods.
Also, please link to the studies & polls that show %95 of users do not want serviceable, fixable, or user upgradeable laptops.
I doubt the veracity of your claim.
How many of your MacBook Pros shipped with removable batteries?
I've found Dells, Lenovos and even MSIs aren't too bad to take apart; even their incredibly thin version too. Most have replaceable parts (Carbon X1 has soldered on ram .. grr, but you could get an adapter to M.2 for the first gen weird/custom SSD).
You can make super thin laptops that are serviceable, and with high end developer laptops running upwards of a grand, yes, people do service them. At most shops I worked at, if your Dell went bad, the desktop support team would take it apart get a replacement screen, bezel, battery, whatever, and send the original back as part of their service contract.
A practical example of the curse of dimensionality if you will. Seems to be a pretty common problem.
http://surfacepro3ssdupgrade.blogspot.it/2015/02/surface-pro...
to change the SSD in a Surface 3.
(you need some guts to follow it)
But still it is possible, and it is clear that making a "proper" small cover/latch door for allowing changing that would have costed nothing or next to nothing to MS, and added nothing to thickness, so it is IMHO a "political" decision to accelerate the obsolescence of these devices or to attempt to create a repair monopoly, not unlike what Apple attempted (and to a certain extent managed to succeed with).
One other potential benefit may be less worry about your laptop shipment being intercepted in Langley before delivery.
For instance, latest (non-Pro) iPad went back to a more repairable chassis that educators are liking because the screen is much easier to replace. And Chromebooks are so cheap if they break it's not a huge loss.
I don't think the Surface is particularly targeted to edu enough to alter their hardware assembly decisions though.
Students wreck stuff the DO own, as well.
On the other hand, if Langley intercepted your laptop shipment during the design and manufacturing phases, there's nothing you can do about it.
Vault7 shows they could infect Samsung TVs with just a USB stick. It's a little harder with a laptop with TPM, but not that much more so.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+Tea...
Vice is just an easier way to read it overall.
I'd rather we continue the march toward making the physical form factor of computers slowly disappear, which will be a much bigger win for everyone. That said, during this march we need to allow certain frequent repairs (like screens and buttons) to be easily accessible, because that is fair.
Mandating upgradability means bulking things up with upgrade slots, rather than integrating things onto a lower power, more compact SoC. The other benefit of this is environmental, since you're making a smaller system with fewer components over time.
Common stuff that breaks on phones: screens, USB jack (hi Samsung, I managed to break EVERY USB port on my 5 Samsung phones so far), 3.5mm jack (hello pants dirt, my old friend). Worst phones are these where the USB port is soldered directly to the motherboard and not a cheap daughter board - next to zero repair shops have a solder reflow oven or the necessary skill to operate one, and it certainly doesn't help that there seem to be thousands of different versions of a micro USB jack.
Common stuff that breaks on laptops: keyboard (hi coffee, hi fat cat), HDMI jack and especially power jacks.
Both get hit by batteries going bonkers - I had a couple of laptops with swollen batteries, and I'm happy I still have a phone with a replaceable battery, been through two batteries now.
Having to throw away a (possibly) 1500+ € device because COMMON parts, that cost CENTS, cannot be serviced, is beyond ridiculous.
> That said, during this march we need to allow certain frequent repairs (like screens and buttons) to be easily accessible, because that is fair.
Keyboards and buttons make sense, as those are mechanical parts users interact with a lot.
Ports are a different story. Is over-use of ports really going to be as much an issue in in 5-10 years? We're fast trending away from lots of ports, favoring wireless for networking, audio/video streaming, and charging.
And as far as standards go, USB-C and Lightning are better designed to break at the cable without breaking the device - a much better (engineering) approach to solving this problem.
Also, at some point if you break USB jacks on 5 of your Samsung phones, perhaps you should buy from a different vendor that can make something more durable. I think that goes for a lot of cheap products - they break more often because they're not built as well.
Introducing legislation to reduce the frustration of cheap products today would come at the expense of forward progress and finding engineering solutions to these in the years to come.
I had to give up on a replaceable battery (I normally end up using a phone well after the first battery dies), but I was able to put a wireless charging pad inside the case of my Pixel Xl. So now my usb port is mostly unused and will hopefully last longer than the rest of the phone.
If governments wants to decrease waste the should require replaceable batteries. Sad that just as decent quality materials are becoming quite common and CPU/ram are not limiting factors that devices could last 5-10 years... if not for the epoxied batteries.
I'm not sure what this means. Can you clarify what you were thinking?
Historically you sit down in front of a computer which bundles compute, display, and kb/mouse input all together. Laptops are variants on that. The last decade's growth in new form factors (phone, tablets, watch, AR/VR, voice, even cloud) are on a path to take over many of the jobs traditionally handled by a 'computer', so my point was just that we shouldn't be too wedded to our existing idea of form factors. I love my big monitors but I'd actually prefer a VR headset, something 1/10th the size or less.
Isn't that what the label "No user-serviceable parts inside" is supposed to convey?
I would extend to say that any computing device costing over X amount (say $1000 USD) have user replacement ability to also include input device(s), memory and storage. Too many laptops are tossed because the keyboard wears out, or the drive dies.
It works ok with watches that have a very small area and can use double gaskets which are clamped very very strongly.
The same thing will not work with a mm or thiner piece of plastic that is kept in place by its flex and a few hooks.
If you can design a chassis with a replaceable battery which is waterproof and is not substantially thicker than modern smartphones a lot of companies would like to have a chat with you.
Recent thinkpad X1Cs are only 0.65in and have user serviceable batteries via just a couple screws. So it's definitely not a crazy hard feat to pull this off.
Granted this is not a waterproof laptop, it is simply water resistant (no dropping into the pool). However, that seems to be what you're asking for in your original reply. The only question remains what you believe to be "substantially thicker than a modern smartphone".
I could replace the oil in my car, I'm positive I could figure it out. But I would much rather forgo the money I would save doing so and have it done by an auto shop.
I currently have a 6 year old macbook pro and I love it. I was able to upgrade it a few times (RAM to 16GB and a 650GB SSD) but I am not sure if I will buy another mac if apple has no laptop that is upgradeable and servicable to a certain degree. While my mac is still fine, the CPU is getting slow (compiling bigger programs takes 5 to 10 times as long as they do on newer machines) and I am worried that my mac might not get security upgrades any time now.
What the EU would have to do is strike a good compromise, which makes it realistic to upgrade/service devices without pissing off customers because "EU device are so much bigger". Maybe they should force manufactures to sell a bulkier device which is serviceable alongside a non-serviceable device for the same price if a company insists on having a non-serviceable device. But that would increase the costs significantly because now suddenly Apple/Microsoft has to design two devices and offer them for the same price even though one device might only be bought by 1% of the customers.
I would really like a bigger MacBook Pro with upgradable components. I use my MacBook as a desktop computer 99% of the time (lit closed with an external screen) but I also need to be able to take it anywhere the 1% and not have to send a large amount of time to upgrade the software, install the new tools just to realize I have forgotten something and use all my mobile just to download that one thing. But maybe I am just a minority.
Do they, though? Like the latest MBP, less battery life, no 32GB option - I don't see many people complaining, "Sorry, the Early 2016 MBP is too thick, need it thinner".
There are a lot of people who buy powerful MacBooks because it makes them feel important. Some of them tend to be sales people who travel to customers to show off some software on their $2k Hardware although this software runs just fine on a MacBook Air.
We are a small bubble who can actually take advantage of much ram (I for one need a lot for VMs and google chrome) but most people do not need more ram. fortunately, this year developers and media professionals were finally fed up with the under specced MacBooks and cried loud enough so that the media heard them. And suddenly a lot of people who already had the MacBooks also thought 8/16GB was not enough and started complaining.
Given that the difference between the two in thickness is .1", just over 2mm, I'd likely equate that to bias. Yes, it's thinner, but in a way that is noticeable on your lap or your desk, or in your backpack? Not as much.
No sarcasm.
But you said above:
> At least RAM, storage, and batteries should be easily exchangeable by a normal user.
I think the difficulty you're having in specifying what exactly you would want to see out of such a law is indicative that such a law would be ridiculous. Who decides what a "normal" user is? What does "easily exchangeable" mean? How do they enforce this law?
The fact that the iPhone is successful is proof that people don't want what you want. I don't see why you feel like your preferences somehow are more important than those of others such that that they warrant a law.
Most of the people who can afford to spend that kind of money on a high-price laptop with mid-range specs are the sort to buy a new one in a year or two anyhow.
If someone's looking for a computer to last them a number of years, I generally wouldn't recommend a Surface product. A mid-range Acer or Dell is not as pretty or thin, but is going to be easier to repair and upgrade over time.
Laptops used to be like that as well. A serious use would pay top $$$ and get a well built "tank" of a device. The designs changed less often, parts availability was good, and the more likely parts to break (charging ports, keyboards, and batteries) were replaceable.
Now the opposite has happened. The cheap crappy laptops are easier to work on, and the expensive laptops are thin, sealed, and impossible to work on.
Sad.
Also as large as a small New York apartment.
Why does one assume the Surface Laptop (or MacBook Air) is supposed to meet all possible needs?
Whenever there is a technological stabilization round the corner,There is another different kind of device created and people run towards the new device.
I don't like having my name attached to a link I didn't want shared. Vice is a high-quality publication, and it brought a compelling angle to the iFixit review. As the OP, I wanted to share the Vice article (which links to the iFixit review).
A random video from some random guy about car applications of the material is about as unrelated as possible. You're not sitting on the material for 2-3 hours a day.
The video describes the wear on a steering wheel, which seems comparable given its also something the user puts their hands on to interact with. As we know, hands are dirty & oily, and thats one of the biggest challenges in choosing what materials to build a computer out of. See ABS vs PBT vs other plastics in the mechanical keyboard world - people care about this.
The video at least gives us something we can look out for. There may be a wide variety of Alcantara types out there that wear differently, we don't know though.
I've been a bit of a fan boy, and all but one piece of Microsoft hardware I've owned has needed factory service. Xbox 360, Zune 80, Surface RT, Surface 3, Surface Pen, Nokia 920. Its embarrassing. Only my Xbox One has been spared, but I've used it less than 100 hours, so who knows how it would fare if I actually used it.
I've never met a surface owner who didn't have a serious hardware or software failure within the warranty period. Its embarrassing. Questioning the validity of their product design is 100% valid.
This 'seductive vision' is also a direct assault on the consumers right and prerogative (once taken for granted) that he(she) own and do with as he deems fit, any item purchased with his money. First, the abominable Windows 10 which is a brazen intrusion on users privacy; now the Surface. What else MS ?
But you literally cant. Isn't that the point at issue ?
I marvel at many responses here that explain this to a "design" issue, "this is what the market wants". No it is not. It is a malicious attempt by Msft to dispossess you of your money and what used to be an unwritten consumer right. We are expected to accept this as the new normal. These companies (msft,apple, etc) are treading the same path as Deere, the tractor makers. How has that turned out for farmers ?
Now have they made it really difficult to do so because of the design choices they made, yes, absolutely, but they are in no way actually preventing you from doing something with the device. You don't have some inherent right to have a device that is easy to disassemble.
And the market absolutely wants this. I've owned probably a dozen laptops over the last 15 years or so and the only upgrade I ever did was to add more RAM. I haven't upgraded a laptop in the last 5 years and I always am sure to purchase my laptop with a healthy set of RAM. These devices (Surface and Macbook) are not trying to compete with the $200 devices. They are trying to capture the top 10%(read: those with disposable income) of the market.
Panos Panay, Terry Myerson, and Satya Nadella all didn't sit around figuring out how to screw Lordarminius out of their money. They designed a device that the market wanted. Combine the market wants with the fact that there really is just no need to upgrade/update like we used to even just 10 years ago, and this design choice makes perfect sense. My OG 15" Macbook Retina Pro is still a solid laptop today despite being over 5 years old.