Repair, Laptop Retrospective

Laptop design and manufacturing are incredibly complex, that goes without saying. In the last few years, there has been a renewed, more mainstream interest in repairability and laptops have become a topic of interest. This has led to the success of companies like Framework and existing companies highlighting the serviceability of their machines. This has also led to the interesting debate on how certain brands or lines seem to not care about this anymore. However, I think consumers might be looking in the wrong place for comparable machines.

When I opened a mid-range HP laptop a few months ago, I was greeted with several things:

M.2 NVMe Slot
2.5″ SATA Slot
WiFi Slot
Two RAM slots
USB-C on its own daughterboard
Removable battery
Replaceable trackpad and keyboard

The computer was built entirely of plastic and had a great selection of ports but it had solid internals with a decent set of possible upgrades and repairs. It wasn’t over thin but certainly not thick. This Lenovo ThinkPad E480 and E580, also mid-range machines were essentially the same stories:

I might suggest that we are currently looking in the wrong place for our repairables in the premium market, at least for the moment. I’ll expand later.

Premium machines are built with much better materials that are far more durable and luxurious. We also want our premium devices thin but not so expensive that they are priced out of the market. This creates an equilibrium that the consumer I believe rarely considers and is left wondering where did are repairable laptops went?

The answer is they never really left, they just moved down the street into the economic range of devices.

Products have a certain price range they need to stay within generally speaking. A company that makes a laptop that is consumer-grade really cannot expect the customer to spend more than a certain amount of money, same with a business consumer. Therefore it becomes a delicate balancing act where features that are desirable are put into a device up to a certain price point.

For example, business consumers care about durability, reliability and performance. Business machines can go through a lot of abuse and they still aren’t allowed to fail. If a product fails in a boardroom, it has the computer company logo on proud display, not good PR for the brand. Businesses often have higher performance needs than individuals. Upgrading isn’t really a concern of many modern businesses anymore; having removable drives is more of a security consideration than an upgrade feature. Some businesses are also going to care about presentation as they don’t want to be seen at the business meeting with an “old hunk of junk” or being a burden to a business process because of their failing hardware. Businesses often have to impress and let’s be realistic, computers are often part of the show.

Conversely, you can spend less on durability, reliability and performance on a consumer-grade machine. They are more likely to be careful with a device since they made a personal investment, an individual won’t hurt their reputation if something fails and performance demands are rarely as high as professionals. There are exceptions to this in the small business or freelance communities and these are often those that want their cake and eat it too. I believe those are the ones pushing most strongly for this new generation of repairables: high-performance machines with great build materials that can be repaired and upgraded. I’m one of those people.

The last two laptops I’ve used are both premium devices. Neither is really upgradable or easily serviced and that was a choice I made with my eyes wide open, but the other features won out. To me, this is a very interesting time for consumer electronics and I’m excited to see where the next few years will take it. I do believe that there is a demand for the best of both worlds: a premium device that has high levels of repairability and I believe that several companies are working towards that end. Time will tell if it is fiscally viable for the companies to produce these machines in the long term.

Feb

Chris Harjadi is a sophomore student studying cognitive science. The focus of his studies includes how computer science and psychology connect via virtual reality/”metaverse” applications, as well as learning about the philosophy and linguistics of computer systems. In the article below, Chris shares his thoughts on the relationship between making computers intuitive to use, thinness […]

Dec

Like a few articles on this website, this was inspired by a tweet by a friend of mine Dave Kennedy. Dave is right. ThinkPads have been sporting modular, repairable and swappable parts as part of their original bento-box style design. To see one of the finest examples of this, see the video below. There has […]

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TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read): More and more nontechnical users are using laptops; they would prefer sending them to a repair shop over DIY repair, and the market share of DIYers in both corporate and consumer buyers is dwindling.

So far, I would say that IT businesses have shifted mostly from individuals who repaired laptops on an individual basis (ex, laptop repair much like the “do it yourself” ethos of PC builders) to being outsourced to bigger repair shops (ex, Staples, Office Depot, Insight, etc) in the corporate world, leading for businesses not to really care about the repairability of the machines they are manufacturing. After all, a broken laptop, in an employee’s eyes, is broken and will often be repaired by the “tech guy.”

Since computer manufacturers want to give the consumer what they want, a computer that is easy to repair is not often a priority. If their customers don’t care about the repairability of the device, then it means the manufacturer doesn’t normally either. This gives laptop manufacturers a stronger incentive to “lock up” their computers and make them less repairable because it isn’t as important as it used to be. On the design side, larger manufacturers over the years including Lenovo, Apple, HP, Dell and more, want to outdo each other in providing what the consumer wants. This often means thinner and lighter devices (what is valued) at the cost of repairability (not as valued).

I think it could be due to manufacturers targeting non-technical users by giving them a seamless and intuitive user interface/hardware interface. This marketing has been pushed rather strongly by Apple compared to the Microsoft/Windows laptop market. Over the years Apple made several ads showing the ease with which a computer could be used and Microsoft felt the pressure to create a similar experience for its users. This means the overall skill ceiling to use a computer becomes lower and accessibility is greater. These are both good things, but they come with a price.

Since the number of non-technical users has increased over the years, the DIY ethos has less and less of a market share, leading to manufacturers to cut costs, first soldering chips to the motherboard, then soldering the RAM later on. Even mainline ThinkPads, like the ThinkPad T490 and later, only have one user-replaceable RAM slot. Interestingly enough, this feature now appears on the L series, which is geared towards smaller business consumers that might need to make their machines work for longer periods of time in between upgrades, making this feature more desirable at this price point. This leads to a cycle where non-technical employees and consumers enjoy slimmer and slimmer laptops, while sacrificing tech-friendly features like maintenance hatches and easy to replace RAM. David Hill said it well in an interview segment featured on Laptop Retrospective:

“It’s not as utilitarian as it once was but some of the need for some of that stuff is not so great. It used to be really, really important to swap out batteries, the hardfile [hard drive] and all this stuff. It’s a slightly different world now and to make a computer like that would make it thicker, more expensive, more complicated, layers upon layers upon layers of materials. I think that kind of thing, that time has somewhat passed. There may be a market for some of that but it’s a smaller market.”

Businesses buy these laptops because they are in demand and the computer technicians can fix them quickly by swapping larger components wasting less time on diagnosis. When they run out of warranty, the hard-to-repair laptops flood the refurbished market every 2-3 years. Many computer enthusiasts prefer to buy used hardware because they have the skill and knowledge to have them run good as new. Interestingly, HP and Dell have kept many of these features in their business-class laptops, yet they have also had to put internal batteries in laptops.

On the ground, I see that most tech enthusiasts and people who like to tinker tend to talk about the right to repair (which is an important movement), while other non-technical users will get outside help. In the end, it mainly impacts people who buy refurbished units or old laptops on eBay or other retailers, while businesses and employees tend to be generally happy with using their work laptops. Though the Framework laptop has helped revive the right to repair discussion for laptops, its features are only appreciated by technology enthusiasts. In short, repairable features of laptops are only appreciated by tech enthusiasts, which are making up a smaller and smaller share of the laptop market.

Thanks again to Chris for putting this together. If you’d like to read more about this subject, you might be interested in the articles below.

Dec

The Balance of Laptop Design and Price

Market Share and Repairables (Guest Writer)

Repairability, Realism and the Rise of Repairables

Market Share and Repairables (Guest Writer)

Repairability, Realism and the Rise of Repairables