Microsoft Continues Right to Repair About Face, Makes Its Hardware Easier to Fix

Re:Microsoft Continues Right to Repair About Face, Makes Its... by AnthonyMouse on Saturday August 12, 2023 @04:07PM (#37103779)

In general these things are not actually trade offs. The amount of weight required to use an M.2 SSD or SODIMMs instead of soldering them is only a couple of grams, for example. It has no perceptible effect on any of the things you care about.

It might, however, save the company a few cents per unit. At the cost of making the device unupgradable -- which lowers your resale value even if you never do it. So they cost you dozens to hundreds of dollars so they can save a few cents. That's customer-hostile.

And, of course, the other reason they do it is to make the device unupgradable, so you have to buy another one sooner. Which is downright malicious.

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Re:Microsoft Continues Right to Repair About Face, Makes Its... by kenjackson on Sunday August 13, 2023 @10:31AM (#37110374)

I thought by removing the screw-in plastic frame and using the aluminum directly you could save thickness on the device?

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Re:Microsoft Continues Right to Repair About Face, Makes Its... by AnthonyMouse on Sunday August 13, 2023 @01:29PM (#37112040)

The battery is already thicker than the logic board even with a socket on it.

And because of that the trade off really goes the other way. If you're that tight for space you could put some logic on the part of the logic board beneath the slot and make the logic board smaller, leaving more room for the battery and allowing you to have a thinner battery with the same capacity.

Moreover, "light with good battery life and good performance" doesn't even specify thickness. And quite sensibly so, because that's always been more of a marketing number about who can shave off an extra millimeter than anything that really matters. It's not as if one of them is 7mm thick and the other one is 70mm. And the pointless obsession with trivial differences is how we got this:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/24/17389220/a...

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Re:Microsoft Continues Right to Repair About Face, Makes Its... by kenjackson on Sunday August 13, 2023 @04:02PM (#37113805)

I was referring to the battery screwing into the plastic frame not the logic board screwing into it. For example my Carbon X1 has the battery screwed in. If they glued it to the body they could make the device thinner, although probably would have minor impact on weight.

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