Surface Pro: 'Virtually Unrepairable' 418
An anonymous reader writes with a link to an article at Wired with some harsh words for Microsoft's new tablet: "The Surface Pro is not a repair-friendly machine. In fact, it's one of the least repairable devices iFixit has seen: In a teardown of Microsoft's tablet-laptop hybrid, the company gave it a rock-bottom score of just one — one! — out of 10 for repairability, lower even than Apple's iPad and the Windows Surface RT."
It's the future... (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly more and more devices are like this now. Apple seem to have popularised it and made is acceptable and other companies seem to be continuing the trend.
Link o iFixit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:as repairable as any modern gadget (Score:5, Informative)
Not true, a couple of years ago I would have argued with you as I repaired many MacBook Pros and Thinkpads etc. which were easy to get apart and put back together without breaking anything. Now they are specifically designed to stop you doing that. It is only the timeframe that I am arguing...
Re:disposable tech (Score:5, Informative)
I've spoken to people at my local TV repair shop, and they expect to be out of business soon. Modern hardware isn't repairable. Even replaceable components aren't: They cited the flyback transformer as an example. A frequent failure in CRT displays, and easily replaceable: A little soldering, but that's all. Except that the newer CRTs (before everything went flat) needed calibrating for the exact value of resistance and inductance of the flyback, to compensate for slight variences between individual components even off the production line, and those calibration values are stored in an EPROM chip which cannot be so easily replaced, in a propritary format for which the manufacturer never released any tools or documentation, accessible usually by entering a secret handshake known only by the manufacturer via either a hidden serial port or the IR control interface. The flyback may be replaceable, but it won't do you any good. It's easier to just buy a whole new TV than to reverse-engineer one enough to repair it.
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:4, Informative)
It IS possible to do better. The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD both got 7 of 10 in repairability scores from iFixit. When the battery dies in my nexus 7 (and it will), I'll just buy a new battery and slap it in.
Re:Enter the modern world of ... (Score:4, Informative)
That thing have over 90 screws. Certainly that disproves your theory.
Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
They compare it to the iPad, which is pretty bad to repair... However, as a general purpose computer running a full OS, a fair comparison would also be the MacBook Pro Retina. ...1 out of 10 as well.
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Display-Teardown/9462/ [ifixit.com]
This is a bad trend with custom screws, glue and all sorts of crap.
Re:No User Serviceable Parts Inside (Score:4, Informative)
Those capacitors are large enough to store enough charge to stop your heart.
All he likely did was bridge pos and neg when touching the board and ZAP!
This is pretty much well-known to anyone with electronics experience. If that kid didn't know WTF was up, he shouldn't have been taking that thing apart without proper supervision.
Re:Yawn. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is getting to the SSD. It took the folks at ifixit, professionals who do this kind of thing day-in-and-day-out, over an hour to even take the cover off to get to the inside of the machine. It required a heat gun and a tool to separate the black-tar-like adhesive. They said it was a new record on how long a device took them to gain access to it's insides.
Then you have to remove more than 50 screws to get to the underside of the main board to be able to remove the SSD.
As part of their removal process they said that the majority of people who decide to take apart their surface will likely break it because there are four cables that surround the inside perimeter of the display and that you will cut one of them unless you are extremely careful.
And even once you take it apart, you still have the challenge of putting it all back together again. Since you've now broken the adhesive that goes around the outside, you would then have to scrub it all off from the complete perimeter of the device, obtain new adhesive, and apply it again.
No... this is not a repair that 99.9% of people could conceivably perform in their own home.
Re:Yawn. (Score:4, Informative)
Right, I was merely pointing out that while they made the thing impossible to maintain or upgrade (and how the hell are you supposed to get inside it to clear the dust off the fans/heatsinks?), they're using bog standard notebook components. A real tablet would have soldered the NAND chips to the motherboard. Heck, even the Mac Air have a custom form factor SSD in order to save space in the small chassis. The Surface Pro doesn't even do that, it has a full sized mSATA card in it.