Dumb anti right to repair move Acer aspire 5-A515-44 (Long live framework)

[Mati_BA]

Sorry if it is a bit off-topic but I think it is important to share the experience.

A couple of years back my sister was looking to update her laptop to something newer, after some research i recommended her the aforementioned Acer Aspire 5 - A515-44. Equipped with a ryzen processor 4gb of soldered ram with an extra Sodimm slot for future upgrades and a 128 gb nvme SSD. I know in paper it doesn't sound great but keep in mind my sister only uses it for writing documents for university, reading pdfs and watching videos, she was also coming from a crappy "compaq" made in Argentina, with an i3 I think it was, so a pretty big step up.

Recently she has been experiencing the normal hiccups due to the little and slow ram and also ran out of disk space, one thing that I liked about the PC is that in the box came an hdd expansion kit (picture 1), this kit includes screws, a carry plate and a ribbon cable with the data connection to the disk, the idea behind is that one can update storage and run two disks at once. 

So today I set myself to upgrade the ram with another 4gb using a random SODIMM I had laying around and also install the carrying plate so when I got the new disk everything was ready. I looked online for a teardown to check how the HDD plug had to be installed.

When I opened the laptop to my surprise the ribbon cable connector that is supposed to be soldered to the motherboard under the wifi card is not there, this laptop has never been opened, they just dint added it, the solder pads are there and everything but the dam connector is not, I don't know who at acer makes this types of desitions but they went out of their way to include everything you need to upgrade in the box but they miss the connector, a piece that probably cost 10 cents, it is incredible.

Nex time i have to get a computer for a family member for sure I'm going with framework.

Thanks for reading.

[manikyath]

this has nothing to do with right to repair, this is just acer being a cheapskate and wanting to save $1.40 (which, i recently looked up the scale cost of those connectors, that's what they cost..)

[DigitalGoat]

31 minutes ago, Mati_BA said:

Sorry if it is a bit off-topic but I think it is important to share the experience.

A couple of years back my sister was looking to update her laptop to something newer, after some research i recommended her the aforementioned Acer Aspire 5 - A515-44. Equipped with a ryzen processor 4gb of soldered ram with an extra Sodimm slot for future upgrades and a 128 gb nvme SSD. I know in paper it doesn't sound great but keep in mind my sister only uses it for writing documents for university, reading pdfs and watching videos, she was also coming from a crappy "compaq" made in Argentina, with an i3 I think it was, so a pretty big step up.

Recently she has been experiencing the normal hiccups due to the little and slow ram and also ran out of disk space, one thing that I liked about the PC is that in the box came an hdd expansion kit (picture 1), this kit includes screws, a carry plate and a ribbon cable with the data connection to the disk, the idea behind is that one can update storage and run two disks at once. 

So today I set myself to upgrade the ram with another 4gb using a random SODIMM I had laying around and also install the carrying plate so when I got the new disk everything was ready. I looked online for a teardown to check how the HDD plug had to be installed.

When I opened the laptop to my surprise the ribbon cable connector that is supposed to be soldered to the motherboard under the wifi card is not there, this laptop has never been opened, they just dint added it, the solder pads are there and everything but the dam connector is not, I don't know who at acer makes this types of desitions but they went out of their way to include everything you need to upgrade in the box but they miss the connector, a piece that probably cost 10 cents, it is incredible.

Nex time i have to get a computer for a family member for sure I'm going with framework.

Thanks for reading.

Well this has nothing to do with the 'right to repair' movement being anti or pro.

Did the original laptop listing state that the model you bought could have the HDD user upgraded? The upgrade kit might be cheap enough that it is included in every box regardless of the laptop model in that range, or it might be a genuine failure on the manufacturers part, but still nothing to do with right to repair.

[Nayr438]

Given that it came with a expansion kit and it is advertised as being upgradable with Acer even providing a video on how to do it, it's more likely that it was a error in production. Mistakes do happen.

 

Also as stated this has nothing to to do with anti-repair.