righttorepair Dell shows "proof of concept" "sustainable" laptop with greater repairability.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Yes, and the reason that changed was "ultrabook" designs that use naked batteries.

I'm well aware of that, the entire point was to show how we have gone backwards and gained practically nothing in the processes. Lightness did not require reduction of Z height or the reduction in air volume of the chassis either. And before anyone comments please do the math on total chassis weight for either plastic or metal and graph the relationship to volume. If you don't instinctively know this then prepare for your mind to be blown heh.

 

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Governments in 2012 said that devices with batteries larger than 100Wh are not allowed on airplanes due to the inability to extuingish them if they catch fire due to several battery (and smartphone) fires, which still kept happening (The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall was in 2016, the iphone was 2011)

None of this has anything to do with replicable batteries. Just because it's a rear clip off or bottom leaver out doesn't suddenly make the battery over 100Wh, you can make a battery whatever capacity you like. Unless you've done something stupid like for example remove all the internal volume of the laptop making it impossible to have anything other than a pouch battery of limited capacity and durability.

 

Not sure what point you were trying to make or how it would have related to what I said??

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

It's form over function, gotta look the part of a high class white collar upwardly mobile CxO by carrying something that is thin. Clunky big laptops are for the nerd/lower class.

I could raise a lot of design arguments to counter this but I don't need to since Apple already did it for me.

 

 

Omg how ugly, yuck, it's a few mm thicker than current laptops, I can't stand this, throw it away.

[Kisai]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

None of this has anything to do with replicable batteries. Just because it's a rear clip off or bottom leaver out doesn't suddenly make the battery over 100Wh, you can make a battery whatever capacity you like. Unless you've done something stupid like for example remove all the internal volume of the laptop making it impossible to have anything other than a pouch battery of limited capacity and durability.

Sure it does, or have you never seen expansion batteries on HP laptops that stick out of the back of the laptop? The regulations basically made any design with externally removable battery pointless, so they saved a few pennies and made the back either one solid metal part (eg the XPS/Precision 55xx), or one contiguous plastic part (eg Latitude laptops)

 

Need I remind you that the minor difference between the two is that the plastic laptops will expand with the battery, where as the metal laptops will have the battery pop-out the touchpad or anything else glued/clipped in. 

 

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Not sure what point you were trying to make or how it would have related to what I said??

Since when has that ever stopped you from replying to my posts.

 

"Thin and Light" Ultrabooks are the antithesis to repair-ability and making the damn things 2mm thicker to support screws instead of glue wouldn't kill anyone.

[Doobeedoo]

We'll see how companies hold on better repairability in general. Good to see in general some move from others, so always good to see that it pushes more to follow.

[leadeater]

51 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Sure it does, or have you never seen expansion batteries on HP laptops that stick out of the back of the laptop?

Those older batteries had much stronger plastic enclosures and also used cells that are metallic, I have never ever seen one of those bulge. I've come across many failed ones but never have they compromised the battery packaging or even bulged at all.

 

The ones that slot in the bottom I could see that happening as they are a pouch battery in a solid plastic carrier and if a pouch battery can push out a MacBook Pro track pad from a aluminum chassis then it can easily bust open a plastics carrier.

 

Either way Lithium-Ion battery bulging/expansion is near as much exclusive to pouch batteries. Older batteries simply didn't catch fire like these modern pouch batteries do, it's not coincidence and there is a correlation between fires in planes and the change to pouch batteries. The reason they catch fire is because the cell splits and breaches getting exposed to air and then runaway reaction happens.

 

18650 vs pouch, 18650 wins on safety every time.

 

Either way 100Wh limit still has nothing to do with the battery being easily replaceable like of old. Those larger batteries were still below 100Wh, remember energy density is far greater now than then.

 

51 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Since when has that ever stopped you from replying to my posts.

Well I do try and figure out what you are trying to say, that often entails asking "What are you trying to say?", because you tangent like a WAN show discussion or an entire Trash Taste Podcast 

[Quackers101]

I would really want to see what easy recyclable PC would like today with the current tech.

while it would be a lot worse performing and deal with other elements and bigger size.

 

if it was in a PC or laptop. with reduced mixed metals (or toxic ones) and layers.

[Heliian]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

Call me back when they let you replace ram and storage again

I just bought a new Dell g15 laptop that has fairly easy access to ram and storage.  Just popped in another 8gb ram, easy. 

However, the tw@ts at Dell don't include the mounting bracket and heatsink for the 2nd m.2 I wanted to install.  They don't even list the parts for sale and the only option is a month away via 3rd party sellers.  Who the f thought that was a good idea? 

[Zando_]

On 12/15/2021 at 4:37 AM, williamcll said:

Want fully repairable laptop? Get a clevo. 

Define repairable. If you find a source for parts in the US/UK/EU, please let me know. Clevo is incredibly hard to work with - AVADirect’s own RMA division can’t get parts reliably. Finding them without the corporate links was impossible when I was hunting parts for mine, and 2nd hand parts are bogglingly expensive on eBay due to their rarity. 
 

You can take them apart and swap RAM and drives, but you can do that in any computer that doesn’t have them soldered down. 

[saltycaramel]

Oh boy the amount of forced skepticism in the latest WAN by Framework-investors about this Dell initiative. 

 

Dell shows PoC (read: PoC) —> Linus immediately emails them “Let me go hands on with it now!” —> They said NO, mmmh that’s fishy. 

 

Lol. 

[mr moose]

On 12/15/2021 at 10:21 PM, leadeater said:

 Anyone remember their arms falling off because those laptops were only 20%-40% heavier than today?
 

You know straight up anyone using weight as a critical spec is either in late stage cancer and will likely fold lifting a pencil or they have fanboyitis.

 

If 2Kg is too much to carry from one class/meeting to another then don't even think about a real job, you know, like farming, construction, nurse, etc.

[Kisai]

17 hours ago, mr moose said:

You know straight up anyone using weight as a critical spec is either in late stage cancer and will likely fold lifting a pencil or they have fanboyitis.

 

If 2Kg is too much to carry from one class/meeting to another then don't even think about a real job, you know, like farming, construction, nurse, etc.

 

I think the benchmark for "it's too heavy" is to take the largest text-book that a student is required to have and weigh that against the laptop.

 

Back in the late 90's/early 2000's when there were no text books on PDF's, going to high school, college or university often resulted in carrying 10kg of books or more, every day. Sure that built some strength for kids and teens, but in general it resulted in a lot of MSI (Musculoskeletal Injury) injuries, some that people 20-30 years later are still suffering from.

 

To me that means a student laptop (not a gaming laptop) maximum is about 2kg. Anyone can lift 2kg (which is about the weight of a 2L bottle of soda/milk/etc.) The only reason for smaller and lighter than this, is for weight-specific applications (eg aircraft/spacecraft.) When a laptop gets smaller than this, you should be using a fanless tablet, because things this thin can't be cooled properly, and laptop fans in these thin-and-lights sound like jet engines and wear out after only a few months.

 

Contrast that with gaming laptops which should just straight up be thick enough, including thicker cooling systems so that they aren't 100db jet engines. Like I kid you not, these Asus ROG Zephyr laptops are louder than the thicker Dell Precision 7xxx laptops I worked on. Entirely to them being half as thick. I had mine running all day just playing video, and the noise was unbearable.

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

I think the benchmark for "it's too heavy" is to take the largest text-book that a student is required to have and weigh that against the laptop.

 

Back in the late 90's/early 2000's when there were no text books on PDF's, going to high school, college or university often resulted in carrying 10kg of books or more, every day. Sure that built some strength for kids and teens, but in general it resulted in a lot of MSI (Musculoskeletal Injury) injuries, some that people 20-30 years later are still suffering from.

 

To me that means a student laptop (not a gaming laptop) maximum is about 2kg. Anyone can lift 2kg (which is about the weight of a 2L bottle of soda/milk/etc.) The only reason for smaller and lighter than this, is for weight-specific applications (eg aircraft/spacecraft.) When a laptop gets smaller than this, you should be using a fanless tablet, because things this thin can't be cooled properly, and laptop fans in these thin-and-lights sound like jet engines and wear out after only a few months.

 

Contrast that with gaming laptops which should just straight up be thick enough, including thicker cooling systems so that they aren't 100db jet engines. Like I kid you not, these Asus ROG Zephyr laptops are louder than the thicker Dell Precision 7xxx laptops I worked on. Entirely to them being half as thick. I had mine running all day just playing video, and the noise was unbearable.

 

 

Still can't accept the argument that it's too heavy and must be made 200g lighter or someones arm is going to fall off.  Even librarians regularity carry and stack 2kg of books all day everyday.  

 

 

[Kisai]

25 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Still can't accept the argument that it's too heavy and must be made 200g lighter or someones arm is going to fall off.  Even librarians regularity carry and stack 2kg of books all day everyday.  

 

 

Librarians have book carts, they don't run around with stacks of books. The amount of time they might carry a thick 2kg book is about a minute if they have to climb a ladder.

 

Anyway, the point still stands, there has never been a reason to have a thin-and-light laptop short of weight having to be precise (eg fuel calculations,) and then you should be using a tablet instead if you have to shave that much weight off.

[hishnash]

On 12/18/2021 at 9:23 PM, saltycaramel said:

Oh boy the amount of forced skepticism in the latest WAN by Framework-investors about this Dell initiative. 

 

Dell shows PoC (read: PoC) —> Linus immediately emails them “Let me go hands on with it now!” —> They said NO, mmmh that’s fishy. 

 

Lol. 

To be honest I think I agree with Luke on this one, nothing at all in dells press release makes this loop more repairable or sustainable but rather just cheaper to make. 

Replacing screws with clips etc is only going to reduce the linespace of the device, screws really do not make a device less reparable. From what they shared it looks like they want to use quite large modules this will mean that the `repair` cost will be very high, eg if a TB port gets damaged you will be replacing a large unit including lots of costly parts rather than having 2 screws hold down the port and a removable flex cable.

 The current way many laptops (including Macs) do most of thier ports by screwing the ports to the case and then using a flex cable to attach them to the mother board is much much better for repair but it does require screws and a flag cable to ensure that the were at tear that ports get (from users nocking cables around) does not trasfure into the solder on the costly motherboard. 

A designed like the one dell proposed in these images strongly looks like it will end up with a LOT of damaged ports etc and you will likely end up paying a high price to replace large segments of the laptop as they look like sealed modules with physical (not flex) connections. 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, hishnash said:

To be honest I think I agree with Luke on this one, nothing at all in dells press release makes this loop more repairable or sustainable but rather just cheaper to make. 

Replacing screws with clips etc is only going to reduce the linespace of the device, screws really do not make a device less reparable. From what they shared it looks like they want to use quite large modules this will mean that the `repair` cost will be very high, eg if a TB port gets damaged you will be replacing a large unit including lots of costly parts rather than having 2 screws hold down the port and a removable flex cable.

 

Honestly, screws make it more repairable, but not necessarily better than magnets. People always, ALWAYS, break clips. Glue can not be repaired.

 

4 hours ago, hishnash said:

 The current way many laptops (including Macs) do most of thier ports by screwing the ports to the case and then using a flex cable to attach them to the mother board is much much better for repair but it does require screws and a flag cable to ensure that the were at tear that ports get (from users nocking cables around) does not trasfure into the solder on the costly motherboard. 

 

Which is the correct design. The ports are always the things that break. Many cheap designs solder the ports to the boards, but they're not actually held to the board with anything, which is why they break. 

 

 

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Which is the correct design. The ports are always the things that break. Many cheap designs solder the ports to the boards, but they're not actually held to the board with anything, which is why they break. 

 

If they are held to the board then you can have other issues since a shock then travels through the board leading to other solder joints on the board possibly getting damaged. This is why the screwed to the case ports + flex cable (very important that this is a flex cable so it does not transmit these forces) is the best sustainable solution. 

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, hishnash said:

If they are held to the board then you can have other issues since a shock then travels through the board leading to other solder joints on the board possibly getting damaged. This is why the screwed to the case ports + flex cable (very important that this is a flex cable so it does not transmit these forces) is the best sustainable solution. 

I guess there are pros and cons for different ways of doing things but I do think physical port damage would be the most common and caused by improper usage of the port or damage from cables getting yanked. Chassis damage can be transferred through to board damage based on location and mounting/attachment to the chassis but I'd rank that lower than the previous mention ways ports get damaged.

 

So I'd say ideally ports should be like crumple zones in cars, designed to fail and break in a way that protects the things more important. But being able to fix those now broken ports would have to be included as part of that idealism for me.

[Zando_]

On 12/18/2021 at 2:50 AM, James Evens said:

System76 got in the past schematic (or boardview) from them and I think provided them also to customer if needed.

So... they got a PDF of the board layout? That's not replacement parts. 

[Elijah Kamski]

Dude, I'm still waiting for them to reproduce their batteries for laptops again.

That's all the repair I'll ever need!

Just sell batteries!