You Can't Open the Microsoft Surface Laptop Without Literally Destroying It (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Microsoft's latest Surface Laptop may have earned glowing reviews from certain sections of the tech press, but don't tell that to iFixit. The company, which provides repair tools and manuals for popular gadgets like the iPhone and PlayStation, has handed the Surface Laptop a score of 0 out of 10 in terms of user repairability, stating definitively that the laptop "is not meant to be opened or repaired; you can't get inside without inflicting a lot of damage." iFixit's detailed teardown illustrates just how difficult it is to open the Surface. For starters, there are no screws, proprietary or otherwise, on the outside of the laptop. Instead, the laptop is literally welded together using a type of "plastic soldering" that is rare to see in consumer electronics. Anyone hoping to get inside the "beautifully designed and crafted" computer will have to pry it open with a knife or dedicated pick in order to defeat Microsoft's plastic welding. Whether or not it's actually worth going through the trouble of defeating said welding is another matter, given that the "glue-filled monstrosity," as iFixit dubs the laptop, has none of the user-upgradeable parts you'd want to see in a PC, like memory or storage.

"It literally can't be opened without destroying it," the repair company concludes. "If we could give it a -1 out of 10, we would," iFixit said in an emailed statement on Friday. "It's a Russian nesting doll from hell with everything hidden under adhesive and plastic spot welds. It is physically impossible to nondestructively open this device."

Comments

Not always a bad thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Physical security of the device may be a blessing - leaving it in a hotel room in a politically hostile place would not enable direct access to storage components as on a conventional portable system. Not to say that it is unhackable, but denying physical access is a good first step.

Re:Not always a bad thing

[thegarbz]

So you can guarantee that someone will never need to have their device repaired, and will not need to use it on battery power once the battery inevitably degrades? Or perhaps you'd be happy to make up the difference in cost if they do?

If you're going to make recommendations of 100% certainties then stop making IT recommendations and start becoming an insurance salesman. That would suit your methods far better.

But then you do touch on something interesting. Yes there are many people in the world that I can guarantee will NEVER need to have their device repaired. Not because they don't break their device, but because they simply don't repair it. This is nothing new. There were millions upon millions of people in the past who replaced laptops because they were getting slow and unstable (all it needed was to reformat the drive which Windows was known for), there were millions of people who replaced laptops because they had noisy fans that always seemed to be on (all it needs is 6 screws removed and that blanket of dust blocking the fan cleaned out).

If someone is on their 3rd+ laptop and they've never been to a repair shop, chances are not that they don't need to repair devices, it's that they don't want to, or just plain don't do it in general looking for an excuse to upgrade to the latest shiny because it's 1mm thinner.

Understand your customer.

The car industry is a good analogy for this - would you be comfortable buying a car with a welded shut bonnet, where if anything goes wrong no matter how minor you have to send it back to the manufacturer and pay to have the entire engine replaced?

Welded shut? Quite happy to. Welds are standard parts that are fixed in standard ways. If car hoods were welded shut I'm sure every repair shop will have a welder. Now if opening that hood required a proprietary code from VW that specifically prevented anyone from VW from doing that then you'd have a different story. But in general no I don't have a problem with buying a car that requires someone to own tools to work on.

(Side note I was at the Tesla shop 3 weeks ago looking at a Model S. It would fall under the category of having to go back to the vendor if something goes wrong. I haven't bought it yet, but this concept isn't even remotely going to sway my decision one way or the other).

They could have hidden screws under the rubber feet to release the keyboard and it would have added just a few grams to the weight here and a few microns thickness there.

Next time just write I'm not an engineer. It's shorter.

Who? Show me someone who asked for a device to not be easily repairable.

Don't be dense. The popularity of thin and sleek outweighs the desire for repairability by a long shot. You can see that with the Surface's sales figured combined with the fact that they never got more than a 1/10 on iFixit.

So your answer is "sod everyone who needs their device repaired because they are in the minority". Classy.

Yes. Sod them. There are other companies and other products that feed the needs of those who do. If you want to design by committee to please everyone you will end up with a product wanted by no one.

Please do explain how offering repairs shouldn't be needed?

Same way the warranty got extended on the XBox360 in Australia when the ACCC took MS to court because the Xbox360 was expected to last a generation. See the key word there? Generation. Not immortal. Just long enough to be reasonable. I've had my laptop for 3 years now. If anything even slightly goes wrong with it, it is going in the bin and I'm getting another one. A device doesn't need to be immortal to not warrant repairing. My colleague did the same thing with here phone recently. Cracked screen. I asked if she's getting it repaired and the answer was the contract is over in 3 weeks and then she'll get a new one.

At least...

[hcs_$reboot]

must be waterproof!

Re:user repairability

[TWX]

Even if it's not user-repairability, IT shops for sufficiently large organizations like being able to fix devices when they're damaged, or at least being able to retrieve user data.

We've basically migrated away from one vendor because they promised us portable computers that were serviceable and that there'd be parts availability. Instead we got portables that used a lot of adhesives, had a lot of integration where ports were on mainboards such that damage to ports would destroy the mainboard, and where parts were available they were extremely expensive and very slow to arrive. As a result we re-evaluated and switched to a different vendor, and in the eval process we disassembled machines and saw just how good claims of repair and reliability were. We ended up with machines with connectors on inexpensive and easily-replaced daughterboards, with modular storage, and with inexpensive replacement plastic housings. It's still expensive if a screen gets smashed, but if someone drops the laptop/convertible-tablet with a USB flash memory stick plugged in we don't necessarily have to replace the whole computer. We can replace a daughter-card with the USB and power input ports for $50, replace the broken bezel surrounding the keyboard for $30, not have to buy a $500 mainboard etc.

Re:user repairability

[Anonymous Coward]

To me it is a huge thing. For example, clean water was accidentally spilled on a lenovo laptop. It was a small amount but enough to ruin the keyboard. Few days and $13 later new keyboard was installed and working perfectly well. Instead of throwing away perfectly good laptop, it is still working and will be working for at least few more years. And it was relatively cheap - under $1000. I would take user repair-ability over portability any time. I don't need to show people my superiority by sitting at Starbucks with a mac book or surface. I actually need to get the job done and need to concentrate while doing it.

High security

[Anonymous Coward]

The inability to open the case and get inside makes it harder for bad guys to insert tracking and keylogging devices. This might be a good laptop to take through airport security in China, for example. If only it came with a more secure OS...

Re:Not cool

[duke_cheetah2003]

If you use it a lot, the battery will be shot in just a few years, rendering a very expensive device to the landfill.

This is where I become sad. I am in the electronics recycling business and it's sad times to see manufacturers making devices in such a way that they will never be viable for re-use, by design. So much for striving for sustainability. So much sad. This is wrong on so many levels, I really wish people would look at the big picture when considering purchasing one of these abominations. I don't give a flying F how well it works, when you design something so no one can fix it, you are broken and flawed and need to go away.

It's up to the IT departments that buy this shit to make a statement. You're either for sustainability, or you're not. This product is a slap in the face to sustainability.

Re:user repairability

[I'm New Around Here]

Considering the user gets told "Sure we can fix that and get it back you tomorrow", as opposed to "Sorry, your laptop is going to be out of service for at least a week", I'm sure the users are much more content than you would think.

Re: user repairability

[Anonymous Coward]

I came close to quiting a job over the stock laptop provided by the company. I run ram- and cpu- data analyses, and couldn't believe it when they handed me a 10 yr old dell with 4gb of ram. It took months of arguing to be allowed to use a non-standard high performance machine. People will quit if they can't get the hardware they need to do their job, and they see their career sinking as a result