Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power Portables

'Bring Back the Replaceable Laptop Battery' 216

Posted by EditorDavid from the charged-issues dept.
"If you've gone shopping for a new laptop lately, you may notice something missing in all newer models regardless of make," writes Slashdot reader ikhider.

There's no removable battery. Whether mainstream or obscure manufacturer, the fact that pretty much all of them are made in the same area denote a similar approach to soldering batteries in. While battery technology may have improved, it is not to the extent that they no longer need to be replaced. Premium retention of charges generally tend to deplete in about a year or so. This impacts the device mobility and necessitates replacement. Also, the practical use of having a backup battery if you need one cannot even be applied.

While some high-end models may have better quality batteries, it does not replace popping in a fresh, new one. This leads to one conclusion, planned obsolescence.If you want your laptop to still be mobile when the battery fizzles out, forget about it. Buy new instead. Pick your manufacturer, even those famed for building 'tank' laptops that last forever, all you need is a fresh battery, upgrade the RAM, and a new HD or SSD and away you go. While the second hand market still has good models with replaceable batteries, it is only a matter of time before that too fizzles away. If you had a limited budget, you could still get a good, second-hand machine [in the past], but now you are stuck with the low end.

Consumers need to make their case to manufacturers, for their own best interest to leverage the life of a machine on their own terms, not the manufacturers. Bring back the removable laptop battery.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

'Bring Back the Replaceable Laptop Battery' More

'Bring Back the Replaceable Laptop Battery'

Comments Filter:

  • It should be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @01:49PM (#59400046)

    Seriously, it should be completely illegal to produce things like laptops with batteries that cannot be replaced.
    I understand the rationale behind it is to ensure that in 3 years, when you only get 1 hour between charges that you are forced to replace your entire machine, but let's face it, it is a massive waste of collective resources. Additionally, it produces a needlessly high amount of e-waste.

    I know there are many out there who like to bang on about the "free market", but get real. If the free market was allowed to what it wanted, you would still be getting paid in company store credit.
    As a worker bee and generally consumer, you have a lot less power than you think you do.
    This is why we have a government. To collectively agree on a way forward and force those to move who would otherwise be unwilling.

    Mega tonnes of e-waste impacts everyone, even if you do not see it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      This reminds me that I need to order a new battery for my Dell XPS13 9360 while i still can, the current battery is swelling and pressing on the chassis, bending it.

      Friggin' annoying.

      • You'll want to get rid of that battery ASAP.

        Personally I wouldn't mind a laptop with NO battery, or even better: with a mains power supply instead of the battery. I mostly work on a laptop, I drag the thing around, often have it on my lap, but it's always plugged in. That goes double for my gaming laptop, where there really isn't much point in running it on the battery.

        • Having used a laptop with its removable battery missing... you don't. You'll be surprised how often the power cable falls out while it's on your lap, turning it instantly off and losing all your work. You need at least some battery life while you plug it back in.

      • Re:It should be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SteveAyre ( 209812 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @04:24PM (#59400542)

        Which is another reason to mandate replaceable batteries. It's removable it can be removed and taken to a safe place. If it's inside the laptop, glued down, and case shut with proprietary security screws you can't. Which means the entire laptop and data is at risk of being destroyed if the battery catches fire before you get it to a repair shop.

    • I wholeheartedly agree. The recycle/re-use story at this point on standalone batteries is pretty bad, but researchers are aiming to improve it. Hardwiring batteries to motherboards makes the problem even worse, for both product and battery recycling.

    • I understand the rationale behind it is to ensure that in 3 years, when you only get 1 hour between charges that you are forced to replace your entire machine, but let's face it, it is a massive waste of collective resources.

      I agree that batteries should be replaceable in pretty much all electronic devices. However if your experience is that three-year-old devices only last an hour on a full charge, you should not buy from that manufacturer or at least demand they switch to better suppliers. My three-year-old Apple Watch was still making it through the day on one charge when I gave it to my brother last month, and my various Apple laptops have all had very good battery life even after four or more years (although obviously, unl

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • > It's not something my mother can do,
        Assuming you're not giving your mother far too little credit, that she has the use of both hands, and that she's not one of those poor women who subscribe to crippling learned helplessness, I'd call that a problem.

        I see no problem having to unscrew a cover and replace battery cells (presumably shrink-wrapped packs of them) in a chamber where bare circuit boards may be exposed. That was very common even in the days when non-rechargable C- and D-cells were the dominan

      • I service HP probook and elitebook at work. You need to unscrew a lot of screws, and remove the cover with the keyboard and touchpad. Then the battery can be replaced. It's not simple, but not impossible. I think it should be easier though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by adrn01 ( 103810 )
          The fun bit in taking apart a laptop, at least it was for Apple's, was that few of the screws were exactly the same length. You had to keep careful track of which came from where, lest you end up with some screws barely connecting and others running out of threads before the flat hit the case.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Lenovo batteries are replaceable too. They might use an easy to remove adhesive (pull tab), and the new one will come with the same.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Opening up the case (remove a few screws) and installing a new battery every few years is not that difficult.
      Stop whinging.
      (BTW, I have several laptops. The oldest is a MacBook Air from 2010. According to Coconut battery, it still has 82% of it's original capacity. Other newer laptops have good battery capacity. I haven't replaced a battery in a laptop... ever.)

  • bring back the replaceable battery. Trashing the phone when the battery wares out is a feature the sellers added to increase their profit. It cost extra to change things to make the battery a non replaceable component. Where are they going to recover the cost of making it the way it was? plus the required profit margin?

    Just my 2 cents ;)
    • Not really. It costs more to produce a laptop with a replaceable battery. It has to be engineered. It has to be tested. All components must be adequately sealed.

  • Batteries can be made to be replaceable by removing the back cover, like you do with RAM or gumstick SSD.

    They can be glued with "magic tabs" so they are easy to remove. can be conected to the mobo with a conector, secured with a tri-wing screw.

    that way, is not a matter or swapping batteries every six hours to prolong a session, but rather, a matter of replacing the battery every 2 or three years to prolong the life of the machine...

    • Why do they have to be glued as opposed to just being secured via the cover and plastic clips on the sides?

      • And they believe it will bear throwing away their devices every 2-4 years for no reason at all. Since apaprently, 'the market' (=people) is retarded and does not care about anything, and still doesn't believe that "what the market will bear" is a crime.

      • gluing is cheaper, easier to engineer and manufacture, and takes less space than clips. If you choose the right adehesive (like the 3M magic pull tabs), the adehesive is no problem when changing the battery in al laptop (or battery and laptop in a cell phone)

        • Oh my fucking GOD ... my laptop might be 2.1 mm bigger. THE HORROR. It may not be as THIN as one of Jony Ive's arsty-fartsy confections. HOW AWFUL... what will we DOOOOOOO?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Megol ( 3135005 )

            The difference is much larger than you apparently believe, the tabs have to be supported and thick enough to bear the force of a much larger glued surface and those tabs have to be attached securely to the battery. Add the fact that both the battery and the mating interface add plastics and the chassis itself have to be designed stronger to withstand repeated battery changes. Then we can add even more like the glued battery adding reinforcement to the chassis which means the chassis now have to be stronger.

        • Re:Not necesarily replaced on the fly (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @03:06PM (#59400308)

          In my view gluing is the low quality solution. Trying to fix this yourself is amazingly difficult and requires specialised tools, so most people either go to vendor and pay a ton of money to fix things or throw the old product away and get a new one.

          While this may be slightly good for some segments of the economy, it is disasterously bad for the environment. The entire trend towards replacing every product you own every 2 or 3 years is absurd, and we need to accept that we can't force everything to be a subscribe/rent model just to artificially keep the economy from slowing. Is it going to take a worldwide depression for people to realize that it's a good thing to be thrifty, conserve, repair old products, and re-use and re-purpose last year's model? Today's world feels like a revival of the conspicuous consumption from the 50s on steroids.

          • And the sooner Great Recession II hits, the better. Rooting for it ... it might actually push our country left, towards having "nice things" vs cheap trinkets and endless war.
          • FWIW iFixit has great support for a lot of battery replacements. I just replaced my battery in my phone, and it had all the parts I needed packaged up as a kit. Nice and simple.

            I do agree with your point that glue sucks though.

    • Yes, the manufacturers could and should design for serviceability— not necessarily end user replacement. Most people would seem to be better served with an external USB-C battery bank though. In the office and at home we have had about 5% of batteries not exceed the useful life of the laptop.

      Phones are a different story though— it really needs to be a couple orders of magnitude easier.

      • USB-C battery bank is a fucking idiotic idea ... when the internal battery cacks it, let's lug around two batteries, not one. And let's use a fragile-ass USB-C connector, not a form-hugging battery where the connector is unlikely to break if strained.

        • And when the internal battery is dead it will often swell and damage components. So you still have to go to the Genius Store and have them surgically remove it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Batteries can be made to be replaceable by removing the back cover, like you do with RAM or gumstick SSD.

      They can be glued with "magic tabs" so they are easy to remove. can be conected to the mobo with a conector, secured with a tri-wing screw.

      that way, is not a matter or swapping batteries every six hours to prolong a session, but rather, a matter of replacing the battery every 2 or three years to prolong the life of the machine...

      I'm actually OK with battery replacement requiring tools, so long as it doesn't require adhesive softening with heat and have a statistically high likelihood of breaking something else in the process. If the battery replacement requires disassembly through removing screws and carefully prying clip-on bezels, I can live with that as something of a consequence of miniaturization.

      Devices that glue the battery itself to the interior though, or otherwise damage things like screens as a routine part of disassemb

      • Gluing a Li-ion battery to the interior actually makes replacement unsafe -- because heat is the first thing that you want to apply to a swollen battery. Laws against booby-trapped products should apple.

      • Devices that glue the battery itself to the interior though,

        "Hope this battery doesn't explode as I try to pry it loose....."

    • People who want replaceable batteries want them easy to change as well. What you're describing isn't that far off from today where replacing a battery requires sending a laptop to a service center. No one wants something in the middle where it takes some work to replace one but not as much as a service call.

  • Repairability vs convenience (Score:3)

    by stikves ( 127823 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @01:50PM (#59400056) Homepage

    It seems like manufacturers and consumers alike opted for thinner devices, sacrificing the repairability. We are in this all together. We "speak with our wallets", and prefer "ultra thin" devices to better ones. So much so that manufacturers now advertise the thickness as "12mm thin" instead of more proper "12mm thick".

    If we are lucky, the SSD, and sometimes RAM is replaceable. I had my first soldered RAM a few years ago (I was a bit puzzled, since there was on option to replace the RAM. However it did not tell that only one DIMM slot was replaceable, the other one was fixed on the motherboard). I also had significant difficulty on that particular laptop for the HDD->SSD upgrade, even though it was technically "possible".

    The manufacturers make this easier for us by giving a longer "warranty". When my Surface Pro was broken, they just gave me a refurbished one on the spot, without even trying to fix the thing. Apple does the same, and I am sure many others would do similar.

    Gone are the days when you had an actually customizable device, but rather get one of the prepackaged versions now.

    • is thinner than my kid's iPhone, gets better battery life and has comparable specs to an iPhone from it's generation (it's older than the kid's phone because I just watch Netflix/YouTube and make calls).

      There is no technical reason the battery can't be user replaceable. Anyone who tells you that is lying.

  • Consumers need to make their case. (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @01:51PM (#59400060) Homepage
    They did, by buying such crap they told manufacturers they didn't care. There aught to be a law about expendable components... since the consumer is too stupid to care. Is it me or are consumers getting dumber?

    • Maybe *they really don't care*. What makes you guys the arbiters of what is right? A lot of people are perfectly happy with what they are getting. That's *why they still sell them in astronomical numbers*.

            Honestly, has everyone here forgotten that you aren't *really* smarter than everyone else just because you can program a computer? And that is just something you tell yourselves to make up for you other, glaring, shortcomings?

  • Are most batteries actually soldered these days, or are they simply glued or placed under a cover? (I'm talking about real laptops here, not abortions like the M$ Smurface.)

    • Are most batteries actually soldered these days, or are they simply glued or placed under a cover?

      That's backwards. Soldering is easy, dealing with the glue is hard. My hands are shaky AF and yet I can still solder a battery without any real trouble, but people screw up their electronics while dealing with the glue all the time.

  • Dunno, my laptop from July this year has a replacable battery. Perhaps you should buy something that matches your use case.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swilver ( 617741 )

      It even had only one dimm slot filled, 2 display ports, 1 hdmi, both normal and usb3 ports and a 4k display. Price tag $999. Built for function, not aesthetics.

    • Some type of larger Thinkpad? L-series maybe?
      • Most ThinkPads still have user-replacable batteries. Some are marginally more difficult to replace than others (you may need the maintenance manual which Lenovo shares on their website for all to download for free) but you can do it if you really want. Perhaps the Yogas could be exceptions to this but I have yet to find a ThinkPad I couldn't replace the battery on.

        Now don't get me started on the frustrations and disappointments of the soldered-on memory; but at least Lenovo is willing to tell you befo

  • Yes please! (Score:3, Informative)

    by ReneR ( 1057034 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @02:03PM (#59400092)
    Not user swappable and glued in batteries are a plague: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • Current notebooks all have a slim, pouch style battery, not the 18650 cells in a box, they would be too big. Good luck finding a replacement, I've never see two identical.
    • China to the rescue ... knock-off batteries are made for almost anything, even if the manufacturer doesn't "officially" sell them to end-users. Here's the funny thing -- the knock-offs are often made in the same factories, running an extra shift. They figure that if they can sell 100,000 per year to a given manufacturer at $10 a pop (marked up to $50 by the time the end-user gets them), they can sell another 50,000 units direct on EBay or Amazon at $25 a pop and profit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        the knock-offs are often made in the same factories

        Maybe. But how would you like to be the TSA guy looking at a high end laptop, wondering if it has the original battery (safe), an OEM replacement (maybe safe, depending on the skill of the technician) or ready to catch fire in mid flight (back alley Chinese production sold cheap on Amazon).

    • Current notebooks all have a slim, pouch style battery, not the 18650 cells in a box, they would be too big. Good luck finding a replacement, I've never see two identical.

      They are called prismatic cells, because battery people want to make new names for old shapes.

  • Be it for humans, phones, laptops, or whatever.

    And frankly, electric cars would be much more successful if you could just drive on top of some contraption, and have your battery pack replaced with a full one with a guaranteed minimum capacit in mere seconds, before driving away again. Pit stop refueling style.

  • Am I missing something? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@[ ]ata.net.eg ['ted' in gap]> on Sunday November 10, 2019 @02:27PM (#59400170) Journal

    Because I've been servicing PC laptops for over 20 years, and apart from Apple I'm not seeing this. Dell and HP both have plenty of laptop options w/ replaceable batteries. Not -all- of them are, especially the ultra-light varieties, but there's options.

    It's not like smartphones, where it's near impossible to find one nowadays with a removable battery. Apart from Apple, every major laptop manufacturer I know has laptops with removable batteries. So, even if you find one that does, be a good consumer and vote with your dollars. Return it, and find one with that option.

    • Nokia 2.2 (recent release)
      Moto E5 Play

      There are probably other, but those two have the trifecta of removable battery, SD slot, and 3.5mm jack.

    • On my last trip to Best Buy, I had yet to see a single laptop with a removable battery. I looked up the Lenovo site, all laptop batteries are soldered internal. ASUS, their policy is only internal, soldered batteries. ACER, same thing. The Microsoft store, near where I live, only displays laptops with internal soldered batteries. The Apple store, don't even think replaceable battery. Pine64 laptops? Nope. System 76, option no longer exists. ThinkPenguin, hmmm, maybe you got me there. If I visit a used lapto

      • Very few if any Lenovo batteries are soldered, see below for an example...

        https://www.adaptersdepot.com/... [adaptersdepot.com]

        They're internal, generally under a removable cover, with a connector.

        • I looked into some models on the Lenovo site and attendant replacement batteries, most did not have any listed. Even aftermarket ones. Going through Ebay and other shops, even those ones you mention are harder to find for current models. ASUS reps told me their batteries are soldered. Some of the newer models require you to be something of an engineer even to upgrade the RAM. If batteries are not soldered, then glued or at the very least hard to get to and swap. Now what about this: whenever you plug in you
          • They'll leak onto EBay and Amazon within a year or two after the model's release... aftermarket parts for new models are ALWAYS hard to find, but this is a self-correcting problem.

      • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zero__Kelvin ( 151819 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @06:36PM (#59400930) Homepage

        "I looked up the Lenovo site, all laptop batteries are soldered internal."

        You are mistakenly assuming that internal means soldered. I don't doubt you believe that, but internal doesn't mean soldered. I just double checked and one of the most compact Lenovo options, the Yoga 730, has an easily replaced battery [battery-vendor.com]. I'm sure the rest do as well, but that should be enough to "check your work" and show that you have committed an error.

    • Because I've been servicing PC laptops for over 20 years, and apart from Apple I'm not seeing this. Dell and HP both have plenty of laptop options w/ replaceable batteries. Not -all- of them are, especially the ultra-light varieties, but there's options.

      There are still inventories of older models being actively sold with removable batteries but if you look into it **ALL** of the current latest models don't have removable batteries... by all I mean virtually everything minus some specialized rugged models. What really sucks is that laptop vendors are not even specifying explicitly whether a model has a removable battery or not. On a number of occasions I've had to find a manual or screenshots to even determine whether a models batteries were removable ac

      • What's the issue, removable or replaceable?

        The vast majority of modern laptops don't have batteries you can just remove with a couple of clips, sure, but they're nearly all replaceable with the removal of a few screws to get to the innards.

        Even Macbooks have replaceable batteries, just takes a bit of careful prising to get past the glue holding them in.

        Source : I've been servicing the things for 20+ years.

        • What's the issue, removable or replaceable?

          To end users is there a difference?

          The vast majority of modern laptops don't have batteries you can just remove with a couple of clips, sure, but they're nearly all replaceable with the removal of a few screws to get to the innards.

          Even Macbooks have replaceable batteries, just takes a bit of careful prising to get past the glue holding them in.

          Source : I've been servicing the things for 20+ years.

          None of this is relevant to normal users. People are not going to take apart their f***ing laptops to replace a battery and the f****ing industry knows it.

          • You're right, they bring them to people like me and I replace it for them for considerably less than buying a new laptop.

            Not sure what you're getting so upset about. This isn't a totally non issue, I'll give you that, but it's far from standard in every make and model of laptop sold today.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DamonHD ( 794830 )

      My shiny new Fairphone 3 (replacing at 6-year-old Fairphone 1) has replaceable batteries, and indeed is modular and repairable...

      All reasons that I stuck with Fairphone.

      Rgds

      Damon

      • What a lovely idea, thanks for sharing: https://www.fairphone.com/en/ [fairphone.com] Though it would be nice to also have alternate OS options such as SailfishOS, Ubuntu, Replicant and so on instead of something always teathered to the Google Empire. Pity North America does not have something like this readily available.

  • There is a German manufacturer of Computers including a wide range of laptops with the name "TUXEDO", who sell all their laptop models with a replaceable battery.

    • This site: https://www.tuxedocomputers.co... [tuxedocomputers.com] So I looked at their machines, which are thin and it is hard to believe you can get replacement batteries for them. But at almost a thousand Euros per machine, Yikes! They must be real good though. Are they made in Germany?

  • First, they came for the phone batteries, and I did not speak out ...

    Then, they came for the laptop batteries, and I did not speak out ...

  • This isn't just a question about replacing batteries on the go, or about repairing laptops.
    "Modern" machines with glued-in batteries can also be a bitch to recycle.

    There may come a future where we could just grind down a spent machine into a sludge and have it automatically separated into its chemical elements, but we are maybe a century away from that being even remotely feasible.
    Right now, laptops and phones have to be opened up and the toxic batteries have to be easily removed from them - by relatively l

    • The best form of recycling is long-term use. Replaceable batteries make long-term use more likely ... many people won't even realize that an internal battery CAN be replaced.

  • Recently looked into upgrading the laptop from a model released over a decade ago. After looking at what was available on the market across all manufacturers I took the idea of buying a new laptop "off the table". Instead I upgraded components. Anything I purchase today would actually have been a downgrade in terms of usefulness/value.

    No way will I even contemplate spending that kind of money and associated reliability debt of a removable battery that can be swapped on the fly. It's not just the consume

    • Toshiba toughbooks offer battery slot-in versions in new laptops. Bulky but great.

      • Toshiba toughbooks offer battery slot-in versions in new laptops. Bulky but great.

        Yes, that is nice. The primary problem I had with the rugged Toshibas is that the handle can't be removed like they can with the Dells and some of the pricing is just "too damn high" relative to dell and other competing hardware. I like the modular scheme though it is very nice.

  • Seriously, if you make it so that people can swap out batteries and don't have to buy a serialized OEM battery that costs 2-3x what the laptop is worth, how can you get people to buy new things?

    People are not citizen, they are consumers and consumer BUY NEW THINGS.

    Apple, John Deere, and most automotive manufacturers are trying to kill 3rd party replacement parts.

    Phones should be repurchased every 2-years.
    Laptops should be repurchased every 3-years.
    Cars should be repurchased every 5-years.

    If anyone needs par

    • If our elected officials can't be arsed to do anything, we need a mass "return out." Buy 5 laptops with non-removable batteries or a few iPhones direct from the manufacturer, then return them postage-paid a month later. If a few million people do that, it will start pinching...
    • Apple's doing a pretty shitty job if they want people to replace their phones every two years. I've had mine for four years now. According to their software the battery is at 84% of maximum capacity (if you believe that) and I can go without charging it for a day if I'm not using it heavily, which I typically don't. It just informed me that it wants to be plugged in tonight so it can download and install a software update, which if they were really trying to convince me to buy a new device they would have s

  • Where was this argument when the Cordless Revolution began in earnest in the Seventies?

    Oh, right: being ignored by virtually everyone, just as it is now. Humans are selfish to the point of being foolishly short-sighted.

    Here's an experiment for you: try to find a "kit" of commonly used CORDED power tools offered by a manufacturer, similar to the kits of cordless tools that have been offered for the last decade. I can predict the result: you won't find one. The batteries benefit the mass producers MUCH mor

    • Here's an experiment for you: try to find a "kit" of commonly used CORDED power tools offered by a manufacturer, similar to the kits of cordless tools that have been offered for the last decade. I can predict the result: you won't find one.

      Why would I want to buy a kit? Just so I can get a shitty bag whose handles will fall off, and zippers break? I don't want all the tools in one bag or box anyway, then I have to carry the whole thing whether I want it or not.

      Odds are that the best tools in any given price range come from a variety of manufacturers, and you're better off buying them separately. The only time you necessarily want everything to come from one brand is when you're buying cordless, so they all take the same batteries.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by macraig ( 621737 )

        You missed my point: mass producers are, at this point, selling the batteries first. What devices they drive are almost immaterial to the extra profit they drive. Outside of the power tools market, which includes more independent-minded and self-sufficient people than most markets, the favorite strategy is to embed the batteries inside devices and encourage the ignorant to simply dispose of the entire device when the batteries limit its function. We can perhaps thank Philips Norelco and Black and Decker

  • This is driven by greed and arrogance, but it is exceptionally bad design. I will never buy anything like that and I expect that after their new toy has crapped out on them after a year or two with the battery dead, most people will not either.

  • Just quit with the glue. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Sunday November 10, 2019 @03:58PM (#59400470) Homepage Journal

    I replaced the battery on my 2013 macbook pro - ifixit rate the difficulty of that as a 10.

    The difficulty is entirely a function of the batteries being glued in. Undoing a bunch of screws and ribbons is not really a problem. Messing with heat guns and prying old batteries out of half softened glue is a big problem. There is no space compromise with a glueless solution.

    It doesn't have to be easy to replace the battery. Just don't use glue.

  • System76 (Score:3)

    by lobotomy ( 26260 ) on Monday November 11, 2019 @12:58PM (#59403714)
    Earlier this year when choosing a new laptop, having a replaceable battery was a requirement. I ended up choosing one from System76 (who sell all Linux-based machines). I am very happy so far.

Slashdot Top Deals

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

Close