Microsoft agrees to independent third-party study to look into right to repair.

[Arika]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

The voice of public disagrees with you on that as I've seen it way too often. It's always "Android" as this unified single entity

Then those people are stupid and should be ignored.

 

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Android phones as whole are always talked about as "so much cheaper and so much easier to repair THAN Apple".

Maybe in the early early early days, i've never seen that sentiment anywhere these days, and again, if they are, those people should be ignored because they are wrong. It's like saying all Windows laptops are low quality purely because they run Windows. If anything the Apple crowd are the ones that push the "Android is for broke/cheap people". Maybe that's what you're getting it confused with.

 

Quote

Android good guys, Apple bad

that's extremely ironic:

 

[RejZoR]

a) then that0's A LOT of people

b) literally everyone is saying that how Android phones are all so easy and cheap to repair and that iPhones are all expensive and impossible to repair. It's literally being plastered all over the internet.

c) entirely irrelevant

[hishnash]

8 hours ago, The Unknown Voice said:

Microsoft could make money in the replacement parts business as well.

Not the easily, once you consider the overhead of supply logistics etc, validation and the enviable number of people who will thing they do no do a repair themselves and as part of that break the part they just purchased.   MS could make it break even but making it be a profitable direction would be hard if they are aiming at selling to consumer. (if they instead feed parts into the regulare supply chain to repair shops can buy them, but do not make a bid deal so regular consumes buy them then its different). 

[hishnash]

On 10/9/2021 at 5:46 AM, AluminiumTech said:

Still hoping for the days where we go back to socketed ram in most laptops.

Right to repair has absolutely nothing to do with user upgradable.

 

Soldered ram or soldered SSD does not go against right to repair as long as the replacement SDD and Memory (and SSD controller) can be purchased and the needed software to re-set the SSD controller is provided.

There are valid reasons to go with soldered memory (and soldered SSD).

There are very good reasons for soldered Memory, key is perfomance per W. LPDDR4x and LPDDR5 (and LPDDR5x when it ships) all provide much better perfomance than any DDR4 modules and draw much less power however you can't put them on replaceable PCBs that are socketed. If your building a high perfomance permutable device you need to provide enough bandwidth for the cpu/gpu etc and doing this with regulars DDR would require upto 4 dedicates channels of DDR4, that would draw many times the power of having 2 to 4 stacks of LPDDR4x that could provide the needed bandwidth and use up much less volume.

The same is true for SSDs (if your SoC includes the SSD controller). when you use a PCIe attached NVMe SSD you have a much higher power draw on your SSD (for a given performance threshold) than if you use an SSD controller embedded within the SoC that then links directly to the SSD modules. 

Replacing an entire NVMe drive is not repairing it, if there is a fault with your SSD it is either the controller has burnt out or the SSD dies have been write saturated.  Just replacing the entire NVMe driver and throwing it away is not at all good for the env. What you should be doing is replacing the broken SSD dies or controller and re-setting the controller. Since most ssd failures are due to write endurance this is in fact very cheap as a large portion of your SSD price is in the costly controller (and attached memory), please don't throw that away. 


 

[AlTech]

7 hours ago, hishnash said:

Right to repair has absolutely nothing to do with user upgradable.

It's hard to replace dead RAM if it's soldered to the motherboard. It requires a logic board replacement which involves throwing away a perfectly usable CPU, perfectly usable dGPU if it has one, and other perfectly usable components on the logic board.

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There are valid reasons to go with soldered memory (and soldered SSD).

I disagree with the 2nd part, there is no valid reason imo to go with a soldered SSD. The only reason I see to solder an SSD to a logic board is for the manufacturer to prevent it being upgraded after the fact by the owner of the machine.

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There are very good reasons for soldered Memory,key is perfomance per W. LPDDR4x and LPDDR5 (and LPDDR5x when it ships) all provide much better perfomance than any DDR4 modules and draw much less power however you can't put them on replaceable PCBs that are socketed.

Then I would consider this a defect of LPDDR4(X) or LPDDR5(X) memory.

 

If given the choice of DDR4 vs LPDDR4(X) or LPDDR5(X), I will take DDR4 any day of the week because it can be socketed and I specifically go out of my way to not buy laptops with soldered RAM. I only reluctantly reserved my chance to buy the SteamDeck with it's soldered RAM because I don't consider it as a PC. If I had to consider it as a PC then I wouldn't be able to reserve the chance to buy it beacuse I refuse to buy any PC with soldered RAM. Soldering RAM is blatantly anti-repair, anti-user, and relegates many logic boards to e-waste.

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If your building a high perfomance permutable device you need to provide enough bandwidth for the cpu/gpu etc and doing this with regulars DDR would require upto 4 dedicates channels of DDR4, that would draw many times the power of having 2 to 4 stacks of LPDDR4x that could provide the needed bandwidth and use up much less volume.

I would still say repairability comes first. If LPDDR style memory can't be socketed then that's on JEDEC or whoever designs the standard to fix it.

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The same is true for SSDs (if your SoC includes the SSD controller). when you use a PCIe attached NVMe SSD you have a much higher power draw on your SSD (for a given performance threshold) than if you use an SSD controller embedded within the SoC that then links directly to the SSD modules. 

Assuming arguendo that this is true, the freedom of being able to swap or replace a SSD on a device the customer owns outweighs any potential benefit caused by reduced power draw imo.

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Replacing an entire NVMe drive is not repairing it, if there is a fault with your SSD it is either the controller has burnt out or the SSD dies have been write saturated.  Just replacing the entire NVMe driver and throwing it away is not at all good for the env. What you should be doing is replacing the broken SSD dies or controller and re-setting the controller. Since most ssd failures are due to write endurance this is in fact very cheap as a large portion of your SSD price is in the costly controller (and attached memory), please don't throw that away.

This is most likely how SSDs get "repaired" unless you're an SSD manufacturer. Most people are not going to do logic board level repair to a dead soldered SSD or even to a socketed dead SSD.

Edited October 10, 2021 by AluminiumTech
Fixed typo

[hishnash]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

t's hard to replace dead RAM if it's soldered to the motherboard. It requires a logic board replacement which involves throwing away a perfectly usable CPU, perfectly usable dGPU if it has one, and other perfectly usable components on the logic board.

No any skilled repair shop should be able to desolder a BGA chip like LPDDR4 or LPDDR4x theses are not very dense BGA arrays and you absolutely do not need to show away the entire mother board.

 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

disagree with the 2nd part, there is no valid reason imo to go with a soldered SSD.

Regular SSD controles (that you find on an NVMe driver) will be using 22nm or maybe 14nm and are very power hungry themselves then you need to add the PCIe overhead you quickly will have a NVMe SSD (that is fast) pulling back an extra 4 to 5W over using the SSD controller that is increased into your 5nm SoC and having the SSD dies directly attached. (note when using the controller within the SoC you also end up using the attached SoC LPDDR memory saving further power and components).

However if your SoC does not include and integrated SSD controller then i agree soldering to the board does not provide any benefit (see most intel/amd systems)  since you are still using PCIe and an additional SSD controller. 
 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I will take DDR4 any day of the week because it can be socketed and I specifically go out of my way to not buy laptops with socketed RAM.

2 Stacks of LPDDR4x will provide about the same bandwidth as DDR4 2133MHz   Quad-Channel aka:   68.2 GB/s unless your being a very large laptop your not going to have enough space for 4! memory dims so your going to end up memory staved (or your going to end up having some memory soldered anyway... the memory used by your GPU since there is no way 34GB/s is enough for any GPU even modern APUs need more).

 

 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Soldering RAM is blatantly anti-repair, anti-user, and relegates many logic boards to e-waste.

As i have pointed out de-soldreing and re-soldering SSD dies and Memory dies is not hard for nay skilled repair shop and does not need to lead to e-waste.  The BGA array used in LPDDR is not a very find grid so is easy to solder down you can do it without dedicated machines, flux and solder with a heat gun is all that is needed. This is not at all the same as soldering down a SoC.

 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I would still say repairability comes first. If LPDDR style memory can't be socketed then that's on JEDEC or whoever designs the standard to fix it.

It could be socketed but then it would draw quite a bit more power (sockets have a LOT more resistance) so to ensure a stable signal you would need to run them over a much high power threshold.

 

 

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Most people are not going to do logic board level repair to a dead soldered SSD or even to a socketed dead SSD.

They should go and get thinngs repaired. And you should not need to be the SSD manufacturer to have the tools needed to reset the SSD controller.  (ironically apple is on of the very few vendors on the market that offers anyone the tools needed to fully re-flash the enter system firmware on macs, include ssd controller etc) most SSD controller vendors do not make these tools easy to find. 
 

remember right to repair  is not about any old unskilled person being able to repair things without training or equipment it is about a skilled trained professional being able to get parts, schematics and software so that they can do the repair.

When you buy a house do you start comparing that all the pipes are soldered to stop leaks rather than using (much worst) pressure fittings? Yes soldering the pipes means you likely will need to have a professional repair them if they break but it also means they will live longer, leak less and generally do the job better. Do you have your house levelled when they break? no. The reason you don't have the levels is any plummer (with skills and tools) can repair them, they can buy parts and read the plans of your house. that is what right to repair is about. 

Do not say right to reapir is about user upgradability or user repairability that de-values the movement and makes it trivial for lobiests to push back agaist the movement by showing examples ( as you do with the switch) were any constraints to support `user level repair` or `unskilled` repair would fundamentally damage the product.  If we want this movement to succeed we need to focuse on what is important, parts schematics and software the old construction martial that might be `anti` right to repair is filling a product full of glue (but even then if they schematics include details about what glue was used we can find a solvent to remove it).  

Solder is very pro-right to repair, in many ways it is easier for us to use solder than it is to use things like screws or socketed memory.  In may ways socketed systems that we might thing of as nice and open can be less open than just soldiers solutions since the socket design might well be licensed and thus not solution we can make (legally). 


 

[hishnash]

3 minutes ago, The Unknown Voice said:

Microsoft has more money than you think.

 

does not matter how much money you have, i was responding to the fact that it would be hard for MS to make a profit from offering parts not that they can't afford it just that it is unlikely to really make them any meaningful profit.  They could make it break even but if they attempted to price these parts at a level that make the entire service profitable even replacing a screen would likely cost as much as buying a new device that mostly makes it pointless. 

[hishnash]

6 minutes ago, The Unknown Voice said:

That is why I said in a previous comment, that replacing the item is cost effective, even if it is out of warranty. like some Japanese companies still do.

Solves the problem, and makes a customer happy.

Well this all depends on what level you are providing parts at, if its large modular level parts (eg engineer motherboards) or component level.  One of the common things that fail (on all laptops) is the charging and power delivery systems (commonly due to users using bad chargers or not using a surge protector) when these fail does the user need to replace the entire motherboard? or just go to a repair shop who can look up the schematics and order the needed compotes to do a $100 to $300 reapir rather than a $1000 to $2000 motherboard replacement. 

Right to repair is not about right to replace large modular parts (and throw away most of the your machine) its about write to rapid broken parts (that means board level repair).  Right to reapir is very much not about regular consumers being able to do things themselves its about regular consuerms being able to select any skilled reapir engineer to do the work for them, like with cars, not forcing you to go the branded dealership. 

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, The Unknown Voice said:

In the transmission? replace it, and send it back.

A cost effective way of solving the problem quickly.

Might be cost effective but only while they are interested in repairing that engine (and deepening on were you are in the world shipping an engine to europa might end up cost a LOT), give it 5 years and they will no longer offer that service on the engine and you will be high and dry unless you can get parts and design plans for the engine to get someone who is interested in repairing it. 

 

[Blademaster91]

3 hours ago, The Unknown Voice said:

Mercedes is a prime example of what a repair facility shoud do: Have an issue with a camshaft? All they do is plug a computer into the car, and it tells them where the issue is: In the engine? Replace the engine, and send the old one back to Germany to find out what happenend.. In the transmission? replace it, and send it back.

A cost effective way of solving the problem quickly.

 

 

Thats great for Mercedes, but not for the consumer in terms of cost if the vehicle is out of drivetrain warranty, and the consumer is also at the mercy of the car manufacturer for parts, A lot of car manufacturers sometimes just stops making parts for certain models and there isn't any aftermarket replacement.

5 hours ago, hishnash said:

Right to repair is not about right to replace large modular parts (and throw away most of the your machine) its about write to rapid broken parts (that means board level repair).  Right to reapir is very much not about regular consumers being able to do things themselves its about regular consuerms being able to select any skilled reapir engineer to do the work for them, like with cars, not forcing you to go the branded dealership. 

Source?

There is no point to right to repair unless at least some of the laptop has modular replacement parts, not every skilled repair shop has access to BGA machines or the proprietary tools some companies like Apple use to pair the SSD controller to the firmware on the laptop motherboard. Right to repair has definitely created a push back for devices which are easy to service by the owner, see the Framework laptop or the Fairphone for example.

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

There is no point to right to repair unless at least some of the laptop has modular replacement parts, not every skilled repair shop has access to BGA machines or the proprietary tools some companies like Apple use to pair the SSD controller to the firmware on the laptop motherboard.

Lois Rossman has said this multiple times.  He has said explicitly (other than maybe gluing things) he does not want to impose any design restrictions. He does not see right to repair as right for un-skilled labour to repair and understands putting in restrictions like stating everything should be socketed does lead to design issues (socketed memory and SSDs draw more power for a given performance and take up more space.. leading to small batteries).

 

He explicitly gets upset with people who mix right to repair with user upgradability as this waters down the right to reapir argument and makes it trivial to provide examples were it is better to not be modular (do to power, cost ....) whereas the pure argument of right to repair focusing on: 1) providing a source for powers 2) providing schematics or other documentation to diagnose issues 3) providing software tools/docs for firmware flashing etc is a much cleaner message as this does not lead to phone makers presenting a (massive) phone to a politician saying `if you do write to repair then you will need to buy bigger pockets and pay 5x the price`.  Also you could have a system that is 100% user upgradable but also provides no right to repair, for example a modular system were you can buy modules but only from a single source and then they stop providing these upgrades as soon as a new model ships. (such a system on paper is very user upgradable and yet ticks non of the right to repair boxes at all).

 

Things like memory and SSDs dies do not have that tightly packed GBA grids that you need dedicated machines to re-solder them. Its not like a GPU or CPU die were the balls are extremely small, you can replace SSD and memory dies with a heat gut flux and solder (a microscope is helpful Rossman has done multiple board prepares with soldering smilier level BGA parts into place) some power management chips are more complex GBA soldering (his bread a butter) and he does these by hand.  

For sure needing to reset the controller is an issue for many brands (including most NVMe drivers making them not be repairable only replaceable.. eg not complying with right to repair) In fact Apple do provide the tools needed to fully reset the SSD controller, the DFU mode allows you to full flash the system and does fully rest and flash the SSD controller (on T2 and M1 macs that is, also iOS devices going back a long way). You can find multiple videos of people upgrading the SSD in iPhones by replacing the SSD dies and using the DFU flash to reset the controls, since the T2 is an old iPhone chip being used as the SSD controller and the M1 has the same controller this DFU mode is exactly the same on macs.  

For reference this is a video of upgrading an iPhone 6s from 16GB to 128GB the same method works just the same for macs and any other device as long as you can re-set the SSD controller. 

 

And for DDR upgrades

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjFAr5nM4YU

This is not as hard as you make out and is completely possible for any repair shop that does board level repair. (this is likely easier than solving water damage, what most of these shops do every day, etc were you might need to re-flow traces across the board etc). 

 

[RejZoR]

Seeing how stupid design with purposely hidden screw was in the Linus reviewed Surface tablet, Microsoft should be banned from making devices, not just being "evaluated".

[Blademaster91]

The surface studio having hidden screws is dumb, but at least the SSD is replaceable. I'm curious if MS designed the surface studio laptop before they considered right to repair, even them mentioning right to repair is a step in the right direction, although I want to see MS actually make a repairable surface laptop.

[Arika]

1 minute ago, Blademaster91 said:

The surface studio having hidden screws is dumb, but at least the SSD is replaceable. I'm curious if MS designed the surface studio laptop before they considered right to repair, even them mentioning right to repair is a step in the right direction, although I want to see MS actually make a repairable surface laptop.

the laptop studio would have been in development for a long time, probably even before their last surface laptop where they touted how easy it was to open and "upgrade" as much as you can call changing the SSD and "upgrade".

 

the engineering in that thing doens't just pop up

[Dracarris]

8 hours ago, hishnash said:

This is not as hard as you make out and is completely possible for any repair shop that does board level repair. (this is likely easier than solving water damage, what most of these shops do every day, etc were you might need to re-flow traces across the board etc). 

Wow, apparently if you are Chinese you can even upgrade the SSD on M1 Macbooks. WTF. Now the question is how much of a pain it is to get those flash dies. If it's possible that would make a good business model for people like Louis.

[Dracarris]

14 hours ago, The Unknown Voice said:

A cost effective way of solving the problem quickly.

That's not cost effective at all. There is a German Youtube channel called "Die Autodoktoren" (The Car-Doctors) that frequently show Mercedes cars where the Mercedes repair facility cited thousands of €s for exchanging a unit. In the end, changing those units wouldn't even have fixed the problem.

 

Just last week there was a case of an old convertible which had a fuse blown. Mercedes wanted to replace the vacuum pump for the cover for 3000€. Turns out there was blown protection diode within the control unit for the pump which costs a few cents. By fixing the control unit instead the total repair cost was about 500-600€ including diagnosis and sending the unit to a specialist for repair, a fraction of the originally cited cost.

 

Exchanging the pump, as proposed by Mercedes, would've done zero, absolutely nothing for fixing the problem but only made them a ton of money for selling insanely overpriced spare parts.

 

Exchanging parts being most cost effective is very often simple BS. Mechanics that are unable to perform effective and efficient fault diagnosis ofc contribute.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

The surface studio having hidden screws is dumb, but at least the SSD is replaceable. I'm curious if MS designed the surface studio laptop before they considered right to repair, even them mentioning right to repair is a step in the right direction, although I want to see MS actually make a repairable surface laptop.

Hey, you destroy your $2000 device, but at last you can upgrade the storage...

[Dracarris]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Hey, you destroy your $2000 device, but at last you can upgrade the storage...

"No user-upgradeable parts inside". Lol. Has anyone even checked if it accepts regular (non-MS branded) NVMe SSDs?

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

"No user-upgradeable parts inside". Lol. Has anyone even checked if it accepts regular (non-MS branded) NVMe SSDs?

Given how other vendors whitelist components like WLAN modules, it's very likely they do some sort of assholery there.

[hishnash]

5 hours ago, Dracarris said:

WTF. Now the question is how much of a pain it is to get those flash dies.

You attach your M1 to any other modern mac with a USB cable and put the M1 into DFU mode this lets you fully reset the firmware and also re-init the SSD dies. (its the same as the iPhone after all they have the same ssd controller system).   He shows this at the end of the video. Macs SSD controllers are one of the view SSD controllers not he market that anyone can (legally) download the software for to reset them. 

 

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Hey, you destroy your $2000 device, but at last you can upgrade the storage...

If you do this yourself sure but if you pay a skilled professional your unlikely to destroy your device, think of it the same as going to a care mechanic to get some modification done to your car. 

 

[Dracarris]

4 hours ago, hishnash said:

You attach your M1 to any other modern mac with a USB cable and put the M1 into DFU mode

That's not the critical part at all. I was referring to obtaining the actual flash chips that you exchange without salvaging them from anonther Macbook.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

That's not the critical part at all. I was referring to obtaining the actual flash chips that you exchange without salvaging them from anonther Macbook.

Oh they are regular dies nothing proprietary. Apple use a mix of SandDisk, HYNIX and Kioxia (Toshiba) dies on the M1 product ranges.  All of these use a standard interface so are easily interchangeable, you can likely also use Samsun and micron dies as well since apple have used these in the past on their iPhones interchangeably and apple will have made their ssd controller support all of them so that they can shop around for the best price/supply.  

[Dracarris]

8 hours ago, hishnash said:

Oh they are regular dies nothing proprietary. Apple use a mix of SandDisk, HYNIX and Kioxia (Toshiba) dies on the M1 product ranges.

If that's true I'll sure as hell upgrade my storage as soon as Apple fixed my butterfly keyboard which now really starts to goof out (after 3yrs of daily usage).

 

Okay after some research it doesn't look at all like those flash dies are regular ones. They are probably semi-custom and not at all obtainable.

[hishnash]

35 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Okay after some research it doesn't look at all like those flash dies are regular ones. They are probably semi-custom and not at all obtainable.

which mac do you have? (i was looking at the M1 devices).  While these ssd dies might have different product IDs if you can find a spec sheet (there are some leaked on the internet) you can find the needed voltages and that will let you figure out what parts will work (there are only a few different standards for NAND to talk to the controller).