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Comment by jupp0r | Hacker News Reader

What happens when a Chromebook or your MIL-SPEC LG laptop breaks? The possibility to even get a repair done in a matter of days was what kept me with Apple so far. When you have to rely on a device being available (or suffer economic losses as a consequence) I don't really see any alternatives right now to Apple. Worst case is you could buy a new device and restore your backup. In the past, the only comparable service was IBM's on site technician service where they'd send out somebody in a van full of replacement parts to repair your ThinkPad on site.

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Do you have any non-Apple experience?

Dell, HP or Lenovo would send a technician to your office (or home office). For simple repairs (e.g. battery), they can also send the replacement part and you can swap it yourself -- two of my colleagues chose this during Covid lockdown, and changed the batteries in their work laptops.

And "a matter of days" is a low bar. These companies offer next-business-day on-site support.

Here's an example for a Dell Chromebook, although I'm not familiar with buying individually from a reseller:

> Keep your 2-in-1 laptop protected with the 1-Year Mail-In to 3-Year Next Business Day Warranty Upgrade for Chromebooks from Dell. Providing 3 years of coverage, this manufacturer warranty upgrade features next business day onsite hardware support following remote diagnosis. Plus, get technical support via phone or online during business hours and self-service case management and parts dispatch. $63.50.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1692748-REG/dell_848_...

What happens if you are abroad? I don't have recent experiences but in the mid-2000s, IBM refused to repair my Thinkpad T42 that I bought in Germany when I was living in the US. Apple on the other hand doesn't care if you bring an Indonesia bought MacBook into a store in Sweden.

If you move permanently, I think you need to tell them.

I don't think they support devices during holiday/business trips, but I could be wrong. (I don't handle the laptop/desktop support myself, only the servers, and they rarely move.)

https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Legal_Docs/en/us/prosup...

The big 3 laptop vendors (Dell, HP and Lenovo) all offer a next business day warranty, usually worldwide. To have an engineer show up at my home and business and repair the computer in a matter of hours is a much better experience than having to trek to an Apple store, make an appointment and be told that the entire unit has to be replaced.

How much is that warranty going to cost? I seem to remember Dell's being $300 for 2 years.

Nothing at all the first year as it's included in the price for XPS machines.

This is the most bizarre and foreign concept for Apple zealots.

https://www.apple.com/support/products/

It's free for the first year.

Did you actually even read this thread? This is about NBD warranty, not any warranty.

I am an Apple ecosystem user myself, but previously used Dells, Lenovos and HPs, and never without NBD warranty, so I laugh at all these reactions, too haha. Apple warranty is not bad, but in 8 years of using their products, they definitely deteriorated both in timing, willingness and quality of the repairs. And the frequency increased, too. I pretty much serviced each of my recent (~3 years) MacBooks and iPhones. Personal experience, but still, I used to praise them, no longer do.

Apple laptops come with a 2 year warranty by default. I've taken advantage of that probably ~10 times over the last decade. Not sure what you are implying.

[1] says 1 year, but this will vary widely by country anyway.

https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/mac-english.ht...

I've seen this sentiment quite a few times on this thread. Pretty tiresome to see the same braindead comments over and over again.

I've bought Dells, Macs, Lenovos, System76s, whatever. I found (find?) it hard to believe that anyone offers on-site support for a reasonable price.

Looks like that's true for some machines, they've got a $50-$100 discount across the board for some machines like the XPS 15, which makes the first year free. Without that, it's normally (for each year of the warranty):

So really pretty good for 2 years. I guess they are slightly more worried about it making it to year 4, though.

1. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/serviceselection/xn9520cto03...

HPs is about £50 for 3 year NBD

That's pretty good.

I guess it's only available if you have purchased the laptop in the US or some specific parts of the EU originally, isn't it? At least, I cannot see any way to purchase it or even extend the warranty for my laptop.

I highly doubt such service is provided in Malta or Cyprus, for example, considering Lenovo only has a single authorized service center per each island, IIRC.

I'm living in Cyprus; had a Lenovo technician come here from Nicosia (~150 miles return) to fix my left-side USB ports of my ThinkPad T590 about six weeks ago.

In the past, I've had come Lenovo to remote parts of Switzerland and Germany, as well.

> remote parts of Switzerland and Germany

There is no such thing. These are some of the most densely populated countries in the middle of the most densely populated regions of the world.

Not GP, but I did similar. It was a non-issue because I could buy multiple Chromebooks for the price of the one macbook, and because they're fully cloud synced there was no backup/transfer of anything required.

Once while traveling a kid stomped on the chromebook while it was on the ground. I was able to drive to the nearest walmart and buy a new one for $150*. Within 10 minutes of signing in it had restored everything and was ready to go.

* I normally spend a little more to get a chromebook with higher specs, and I recommend everyone do that. The point here was that I was in a pinch but was able to get out of it quickly and cheaply. I suggest absolute minimum of 4GB of RAM (8GB preferred).

> What happens when a Chromebook (...) breaks?

You throw it away (or better, sell for $20 "for parts only" on craiglist/ebay), then buy a new one. They are 3-5 times cheaper than a regular laptop, and aren't all that much more prone to breakage. And all the important stuff is in the cloud anyway. "Backup" and "restore" aren't even distinct operations there.

Don't expect to run Adobe Premiere on one of those, but hey, you get what you pay for.

That makes sense and is a viable model to handle breakages. Still kind of funny to see this in a discussion about the "right to repair" though.

If you want fast repairs, then Apple – contrary to your beliefs – is a terrible option. For example, Dell includes next business day on-site service for all XPS laptops. They also offer up to 2-hour 24/7 on-site service plans if you so desire. So if you really do care about your hardware being available, you do the opposite of what you just said: Choose something other than Apple.

When my Mac had to be repaired in December 2021 it took 3 weeks (Battery, Touchbar and Keyboard). I ended up buying a second computer so I could keep working.

Plenty of other big PC manufacturers have decent repair programs. Often you can even do the repairs yourself (as Apple is finally allowing again).

I just booted up my HP ZBook after replacing the keyboard. Plenty of videos about how to DIY [1]. Granted, pulling it out is not as simple as in the video (I'm not doing it every day, not every other year) and the laptop weights 3 kg but I'm not buying something that I can't service myself for basic stuff like replacing keyboard and expanding or replacing RAM and disks. I had a HP technician come to my home to replace the screen (a bad wire in the right hinge). It was included in the extended warranty, something between 100 and 200 Euro, 3 years.

I'm about to buy another spare keyboard for when it will wear out again. It's 62.99 Euro.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWrh6IIq57o

I have Keychron K1 and one of the keys failed (I carry around the world as a digital nomad). I took it to a hacker space in Sofia and unsoldered a working less important key and switched it for the broken 'T' key.

Repairable hardware is vital.

> What happens when a Chromebook or your MIL-SPEC LG laptop breaks?

Chromebook: if in warranty fix, if out of warranty, buy two more Chromebooks for the price of one M1 Macbook Air screen.

LG Gram: LG has a pretty good repair network. My team (5) has been using LG Gram 17" laptops running Ubuntu for about a year, and one person managed to chip the paint (it's anodized black on a metal body), but that was about it. They've been surprisingly sturdy despite weighing a few ounces more than a 13" macbook air. Also, battery life is on par with the M1 air I carry for occasionally dealing with App Store issues.

> Chromebook: if in warranty fix, if out of warranty, buy two more Chromebooks for the price of one M1 Macbook Air screen.

That’s incredibly wasteful.

Is it wasteful though? Chomebooks generally can be repaired for cheap with a little time investment. Sell the broken one on ebay "for parts" and someone will repair it and continue to use it.

OTOH Apple's are notoriously unrepairable, or way too expensive to repair (case in point; this entire thread). They become trash when they break.

If you are telling me you are relying on LG notebooks just not breaking - I don't believe you. Everything breaks.

> If you are telling me you are relying on LG notebooks just not breaking

LG has a first class repair network, so if they do break... same as any other global PC manufacturer. Also, standard procedure is to buy at least one machine and put it on the shelf so if one fails... we have an replacement.

> Everything breaks.

Yep.

Exactly this. It's easy to call out Apple but I'm yet to have an experience with other brands where I don't have to ship my product somewhere and wait for weeks on end to see if anything can even be done. Samsung is the biggest offender from my perspective. Everything they make has broken on me. Phones, entertainment devices, and most recently appliances that don't even last 6 months. The good news is when the appliances broke, they sent dish network to my house who also had no clue why it was broken and left.

Thankfully New Jersey (I'm in California) consumer fraud laws kicked in and I was able to get a full refund for my refrigerator.

https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases09/20090804-Samsung-Ameri...

Depending on the countries traveled to, Apple stuff can make a lot of sense for traveling because they have stores all over the place. If something happens to the MacBook I bought in the US while I’m abroad in Tokyo it’s no problem, I can drop by the store in Shibuya or Ginza and get it repaired, probably same day in many cases.

Phones: I gave my Samsungs and Sonys to shops close to home and got them back after a couple of days.

Laptops: I either pay for HP's next business day support (they come to my home) or, for old unsupported models, I replace parts myself. As I wrote in another commend, I replaced this keyboard less than half an hour ago.

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