Teardown video is good, almost on par with something from iFixit. Maybe a bit less precise/well rehearsed but that is OK.
Also like that it's just a normal engineer doing it and not some marketing person/"advocate". Makes it seem much more relaxed and well, normal. Chill dude sporting some tats and speaking normally as he pulls something apart shouldn't be something amazing or anything but it's just such a rarity in todays carefully groomed public image machinery that we see from big companies.
> Do you seriously think tattoos are still counter culture?
This depends a lot on where you live and what your ethnic and religious background is. There are plenty of places and people left in the world who look down on body modification.
This. I live in Madison, Wisconsin (aka, the "Berkeley of the Midwest") where tattoos and facial piercings are absolutely the norm - even my kids' daycare teachers openly sport them.
When I return to my small Mississippi hometown, only "rough" people openly display tattoos, and generally only a small minority of men are not clean-shaven with short haircuts. Male jewelry is minimal, things like facial piercings are heavily frowned upon, etc.
I'm sure it's been said before by many, but I'd have a few extra mm of thickness to get back replaceable ram, ssd, wifi, etc.
The post yesterday about moving back to an old Thinkpad has me motivated to do something like that for my next computer. A Thinkpad chassis with an updated mainboad, screen, and battery would make me happy.
Framework gets us a long way in the right direction; still lacking things some of us need - admittedly a minority:
1. Standardized keyboard. For some reason modern laptops hate Home/End/PgUp/PgDwn buttons; but I use them literally every minute of my typing. Arrow keys too are tiny, up and down look to be sharing the same key - so basically unusable on regular basis.
2. Trackpoint/Nub/Nipple. If you're trying to make a small laptop, rather than crippling keyboard for the sake of massive giant trackpad, Trackpoint is the way to go. Granted, higher learning curve for many, but very rewarding in the end.
Again, understanding we are now talking a niche of a niche - "want standard keyboard and trackpoint" subset of "want practical modular laptop"; but that's why old school Thinkpads are still so prized for some.
They did give feedback a a while ago that they are looking into the thinkpad style trackpoint/mouse-button interface as a purchasable option in the future.
> still lacking things some of us need - admittedly a minority:
Can't you and a few 100/1000 like-minded people crowdfund a custom Framework keyboard with full-sized arrow keys and and track point? It's designed to have bits of it customized/upgraded (including the keyboard).
I mean, that's kinda sorta how the Lenovo T25 got to be - a one-of, 5000 copies run of basically T470, but with old-school Thinkpad keyboard. It's what I'm typing on right now (Glee!:)
Interesting thing to ponder though; I have no idea what manufacturing is like so I assumed that would be much too small of a run to be viable... but I'm completely ignorant.
Trackpoint/Nub/Nipple. If you're trying to make a small laptop, rather than crippling keyboard for the sake of massive giant trackpad, Trackpoint is the way to go. Granted, higher learning curve for many, but very rewarding in the end.
Yeah, this is the current issue I'm having. I can't bring myself to by a laptop without some form of Trackpoint, which rules out pretty much all but a very small subset.
1. Keyboards that have non-standard Home/End/PgUp/PgDwn, also tend to have crippled/unusable up & down arrows.
2. I don't believe that shortcut works in any editor I tend to use; it is when typing text that Home/Ctrl-Home, End/Ctrl-End come in super-handy.
(yes, we can now start discussing Vim-style editors etc; but my point is at higher level - we had a standard keyboard layout for literally decades, and now its again a no-man's land of bespoke crippled layouts, presumably in service of thin laptop and vast trackpad)
Agreed. I think the disassembly video of the Surface SE is pretty impressive (kudos Microsoft!), but Framework still blows the Surface SE out of the water in terms of internal accessibility and modularity of the laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV2umY3R0vw
Lenovo P15 series would be example of laptops that have not gone crazy in light and thin direction, so it has m.2 slots for ssds, and sodimms for RAM as you'd expect, all accessible by undoing few screws and lifting the back cover: https://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-lenovo-thinkpad-p1...
Absolutely love my Thinkpad X1 for running linux; it's pretty much the same design but without the awful number pad. The fingerprint scanner even got support recently!
These machines exist. They’re just not usually stocked at your local big box store because that’s not a mass-market priority. Mass market customers would rather have a machine that is thinner, lighter, cheaper, and with better battery life.
Hoping more companies like frame.work[1] come up and succeed. They have shown it is possible and the laptop need not be bulky or very expensive and still be repairable.
[1]: https://frame.work
The HP video is much less entertaining, much longer, and the narrator is likely a text-to-speech software. However, I think it’s more informative, for instance it shows how to assemble the device back.
> I'm sure it's been said before by many, but I'd have a few extra mm of thickness to get back replaceable ram, ssd, wifi, etc.
This is the exact opposite of what manufacturers want so I don't think there is any hope of reversing this crazy trend. The vendors copying Apple don't understand that Apple controls their users as they are already hooked to their ecosystem so they have no choice, but people outside of this ecosystem do have a choice and when presented with a thin plate with everything glued and irreplaceable and no useful ports, they will simply look for another solution. Not to mention environmental problems created by this craze.
On the other hand, socketed parts are prone to corrosion at the contacts in adverse conditions. My old x61 had some issues with the SO-DIMM socket corroding from all the time in my bike bags.
Soldered-down ram and an add-on socket has seemed like a nice compromise to me.
Soldered parts are prone to fractures in BGA solder balls which are more annoying and expensive to repair compared to cleaning up sockets and rubbing pads with a pencil eraser one in a while.
Socketed RAM modules have more solder joints than the alternative. The packages on your socketed RAM are attached to the module the same way they would be attached to the motherboard. BGA has been used across the board since DDR2.
Of all of the parts of your laptop to break and leave you without the availability of a replacement, your RAM is the least of your worries. Damage prone parts that are replaceable are already hard enough to find replacements for. And of all the parts on your mainboard to break, your i/o is going to be the likely culprit. And few laptops modularize those.
How did you get a reliable new battery for a 10 year old laptop? Lenovo doesn't appear to make batteries for old laptops, and I've had bad experiences ordering from random sellers on Amazon.com.
Nobody is moving DRAM on-die. Apple puts DRAM on-package, and x86 laptops using LPDDRx solder it on the main board next to the soldered-down CPU/SoC. The advantage of doing so is not latency (which is still dominated by stuff that happens entirely within the DRAM die) but rather that LPDDR allows for lower power draw for the same bandwidth.
I think that's a more-or-less acceptable compromise for now.
Who knows, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone add on-board RAM back in to allow for cheaper expansion. Most operating systems support NUMA, this approach seems similar to that idea.
I wonder if this was influenced by Valve's recent "Deck" teardown video?[1] I'd love to see this become a trend in the "boutique" hardware space -- it's a lot harder to cut corners on the internals when you're shining a spotlight on them!
These are meant for schools to hand out to students. Many of these screens will be smashed in creative ways. Better to go with the cheaper to replace component.
That's funny. For the intended classroom use I'd argue this is a feature. 1. Can't fuck with the settings if you can't click on the correct dialog box. 2. Harder for kids to be ahem "multitasking" if they can't fit two windows on the screen.
Screen is pretty bad, but its s a very cheap device. At least its an 11.6" screen so PPI isn't crazy low. I still occasionally see new laptops with a 15.6" screen at that resolution which is bonkers.
This. Kids are expected to use these devices every day for years. If we doubled or tripled the prices, the entire cost of the device would be amortized to just 1-2 dollars a day, if that.
However as things currently, are, I'd bet these will be the crappiest computer kids will encounter in their everyday lives. I wonder if forcing people to use these devices for years will create an aversion in them to pursue computer-related careers in the future.
When you have warehouses full of them, it is better to use up the stock. If they are making new screens at that resolution I would completely agree. The price point is fairly low, but it is a very old spec from a technology standpoint.
I once had to recover data from a dead 1st generation Surface Pro. That required a heat gun, a new torx set and about three hours of time prying the thing apart, completely destroying it in the process. I'm glad to see things swinging back in the other direction.
Microsoft is such a weird company these days. So many contradictory patterns across its arms that it is hard to characterize it as having a singular corporate philosophy. On the one hand, you have windows which has moved more and more towards surveillance and users not really controlling/owning their own software...but then you have the moves towards embracing (and not extinguishing) open source interoperability, and now promoting DIY repairs on their hardware.
It doesn't have a singular corporate philosophy. MS has long had a reputation for inter-department rivalry and even animosity. From what I understand, things have gotten somewhat better, but there's still a lot of tension and disagreement.
I wonder where the bigger pressure is coming from to make more repairable devices. Is it because that's what it's starting to seem like the market wants based on competition? Or is it because they are trying to head off any regulations that might come if they don't show that they are making repairable devices?
The right to repair movement is gaining steam. Even if regulations don't get passed, consumers are sick of being ripped off by planned obsolescence and gouged for first party repairs.
I'm not sure how this would help people to fix this device as the laptop is being sold only to educational entities in bulk. Normal users won't be able to buy. Most people can't fix these since they belong to schools and the schools probably won't spend money on fixing these.
I doubt that the school IT people would attempt to fix it. That's a different job. I haven't heard a school IT person even attempts to replace a laptop battery. Any attempt fixing it has a good amount of risk of breaking the laptops. Hence, they school would have to outsource or rely on a 3rd party to fix and the cost would become even higher.
If it’s under warranty they send it out for the depo repair, but I have been that IT guy before and when there was down time I did crack open dead machines to try and bring them back to life.
Yes, and that it could help inquisitive students? I know in the old days nerdy kids would do teardowns before we even had YouTube. I would assume kids these days still do it.
I think kids definitely can fix their own laptops if they're theirs.
In this case, the school would prohibit the kids to open or attempt fixing any of the laptop. And why kids should even attempt fixing it? They can turn it in to get a "new" laptop. Thus, this doesn't happen.
The somewhat-cynical answer (in addition to the obvious answer that it still is useful for employees of companies that buy it) is that this helps continue rebuilding goodwill among techies, hackers, etc. Much like their investment in open source, there is nontrivial ROI from marketing and reputation alone. They are probably trying to stay ahead of Right To Repair sentiment.
Many schools and school districts have technicians to repair hardware like projectors and computers. When I was in high-school (10 years ago), we were pretty early in the laptop-for-every-student transition, and there were 1-2 part-time technicians who would repair laptops all day long.
Hiring a part-time technician to fix the hardware isn't cheap. It's probably cheaper to outsource it to a 3rd party or even sell away the laptop and buy a new one. It doesn't make economic senes to have a technician to fix a $250 laptop.
Looks like the Surface Laptop SE is pretty repairable if you can source parts, much better than the Surface Pro and Surface book series which is pretty much glued together, making it virtually impossible for novices to take apart without causing further damage.
The reason why they posted this is probably because the Surface Laptop was, as far as I remember, the only device to get a 0 repairability score from iFixit, with the conclusion that
> The Surface Laptop is not a laptop. It’s a glue-filled monstrosity. There is nothing about it that is upgradable or long-lasting, and it literally can’t be opened without destroying it.
The only other thing which scored that low from them was an April Fool's teardown of an orange (which scored O).
This is great, but I just want to give a word of caution.
Just because they've posted this, we shouldn't loosen the pressure valve on them. For all we know this could be just "let's post a single video so people will stop complaining to us that we're not repair-friendly". They might climb back into their anti-repair chairs and recline again after this. We need to keep the flame under their feet until repairability becomes part of their DNA, and even then we'll need to ensure they stay like that.
FTA: "Repairability is a selling point for the Surface Laptop SE in particular because the laptop is being marketed to schools, where laptops can be dropped, spilled on, or otherwise abused by kids who may or may not know better."
This should read: "... where laptops will be dropped, spilled on, and abused by kids who know better."
Besides, many kids enjoy learning by way of repairing. Especially if it works afterword.
I worked on a project in the mid 90s where our customer (an electric utility) wanted to issue rugged laptops to field engineers. The relevant comment from a manger at the utility was "you have to realize, these are guys who can break a hammer"
That's awesome, for me an easy repairable/upgradeable device is a big plus. Only being able to change the battery can increase the lifespan of the device hugely.
Kudos to MS and I hope this trends will pick up with other vendors as well.
There should in general be repair friendly editions of devices design for easy repair, ram upgrade and ssd upgrade. Open boot loader, open source driver and open hardware manuals.
Nice, but using Torx heads for the case is completely unnecessary. If the internals are fine using PH0 heads then the the case can use PH heads too.
I recently found out after wanting to do a quick repair on my (very cheap, Asda's own brand) toaster that it uses Torx security bits to prevent people from accessing the internals! Buying a set of quality bits is more expensive than just buying a new toaster... It boggles the mind.
Nobody should use Philips when Torx will do. Philips is useful when you have weak parts that you want to avoid over-tightening. But otherwise, Torx is less prone to stripping and requires less downward pressure, making repairs easier.
How hard are you torquing a screw into a plastic case? Really? If you're stripping a PH screw head it's almost always a case of using the wrong sized driver
I opened up a 2017 or 18 Dell Inspiron last week to replace the hard disk with an SSD for someone. Of the 4 screws holding down the hard drive caddy, 1 stripped the head. The other three used almost no force to remove. This last one had to be drilled out just to remove the drive.
If the computer had used Torx screws in place, I'd never have had the issue since the force required wouldn't have stripped the head while a PH head had cammed the driver requiring the excess use of a drill.
Are you maybe confusing "Torx security" bits for plain Torx bits? Torx security bits have a hole punched through the center that is indeed a pain in the butt. Standard Torx bits on the other hand are pleasant to work with and extremely easy to come by (heck they give them out for free with most construction screw boxes).
A builder picking up a pack of screws won't buy something he doesn't have a screwdriver for, and a basic toolbox will only have screwdrivers for the most common screw heads - giving these things quite a bit of inertia.
So an American might consider Torx a widely used screw that everyone has a driver for. Whereas a Brit might rank Torx as an obscure security screw, like pentalobe.
They are common place enough now that I think they are fine. That wasn't always true but these days torx is widely available even at generic hardware stores (hell in Thailand I bought a set of torx drivers at a 7-11).
You are correct when we're talking about using Torx for things that need to be torqued fairly highly, but in this case I disagree.
The fact that so many companies use Torx bits means that a lot of people have them handy now, but still, it's more faff than a PH/PZ bit, where almost anything with a thin flat edge can be used to turn it.
Torx are designed for high torque applications. Whenever they are used for low torque applications it is for "security" (read: we don't want you messing with this) purposes. I'd argue that a case does not need to be torqued that high (and if you do you probably risk cracking the case).
IMHO fixings tend to be selected prioritizing a manufacturing point of view rather than how easy they are to disassemble (with the exception of specific security screws). PH/PZ screws can get cammed by a misaligned tool or unskilled operator in assembly, requiring a rework or writing off the chassis. This is less likely to happen with Torx.
Torx bits good enough to not strip your stuff are like 6 dollars for a set.
If the toaster is "totaled" over 6 dollars, that's because it was built to be one step above disposable and no one should reward them by buying it in the first place.
Frankly I wish philips head screws would just die off. They're so easy to strip, it's frequently hard to identify the right size bit to use (the wrong size will work until it doesn't), etc. If they all got replaced with torx or robertson heads tomorrow I'd be very happy.
Also like that it's just a normal engineer doing it and not some marketing person/"advocate". Makes it seem much more relaxed and well, normal. Chill dude sporting some tats and speaking normally as he pulls something apart shouldn't be something amazing or anything but it's just such a rarity in todays carefully groomed public image machinery that we see from big companies.