Laptop Design For Disassembly 188
retroworks writes "Stanford and Finland are cooperating on a project to make a 'modular' laptop which can be more easily disassembled and upgraded, and eventually recycled. Video presentation by smarterplanet.com is a sober answer to the Jaime Guittierez 'Clean the Fan' video."
cheapest is the top priority for laptop makers (Score:3, Informative)
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Propitiatory, as in propitiatory psell-checkers.
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For low end laptops the priorities are cost and "headline specs" (aka what the salesman uses to sell the machine). The premium lines add less obvious specs like size, weight, appearance, robustness etc to the list of important things.
Ease of teardown and interchangability of components are somwhere a long way down the list.
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This is true even in the ruggedized military market.
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Sure, but that's an example of what behavioral economists call "present bias". The consumer is happy if he gets his all-in-one laptop for 10% less than an equivalent modular one. The hardware vendors are happy when eighteen months from now you buy a whole new laptop when a $15 inverter board fails.
A modular laptop is something I've wanted for many years, and I'd happily pay a 33% price premium to get it, but it won't ever become a reality without some kind of regulatory intervention. Present bias works in t
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I also recall that there were 'modular' laptops a long long time ago, but apparently these did not sell.
CC.
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I also recall that there were 'modular' laptops a long long time ago, but apparently these did not sell.
Probably because "a long time ago" was a bad time to do this.
Manufacturers don't want it (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with that.
Laptop manufacturers (yes, all of them) want to make disposable machines. Not only is it cheaper to make them that way, it encourages users to buy new rather than upgrade.
In the past, computer makers had to cater to the geek market, and the geeks wanted to be able to tinker. Although the Slashdot crowd refuses to accept it, the geek market is tiny relative to the mass market.
Re:Manufacturers don't want it (Score:5, Insightful)
A more-important factor than disposable is "small".
It's hard to squeeze all those functions in a notebook-sized chassis unless you use every millimeter of space. Modular designs like Desktop PCs or PC/104 waste precious space.
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You could make a modular computer that wouldn't really waste any more space, but it would cost a lot more to design. And because we live in the real world, it would cause more problems than it would solve. Most people don't want to reconfigure their computer. Most people will never upgrade their computer.
Perhaps one day when we all have more CPU power than we need we will get a universal backplane. But until then, the march of progress ensures that any such thing is doomed to become outdated. PCI-E is the c
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People always need more memory or more disk or a better video card.
Part of this is driven by designs that were "too cheap" to begin with and quickly become obsolete.
Not everyone buys the cheapest crap available. For those that don't, being able to keep an expensive device useful longer is valuable.
Simply being able to separate the "PC" part of the laptop would be very useful.
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... the majority of 3D gamers are moving to consoles and cellphones anyway.
I'm not sure what it is, but something seems very, very wrong with this statement.
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People always need more memory or more disk or a better video card.
No they don't. Lots of people buy laptops, use them quite happily for four or five years with zero upgrades (other than perhaps an external drive for backup) and then "trade up" to a new model.
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I've opened a couple of notebooks to fix things on them, and I don't think you're necessarily right. There's plenty of space in there - not compared to a desktop pc, but still enough that it isn't a totally packed mess (I've opened a Mac mini, and that was a mess). Heck, it's not about total innovation, it's just about standardizing certain physical features so you can replace them. Memory and hard disk are already standardized, we just need optical drive, motherboard, maybe even screen and keyboard?
Being a
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There have also been (rather half-assed) attempts to standardize mobile graphics like nvidia's MXM and AMD/ATI's AXIOM.
space ain't the problem man (Score:2)
Imho, the only real obstacle should be form factor standardization.
MacBook Airs [apple.com] are now fairly simple on the inside, users obviously cannot replace the flash drive, memory, cpu, gpu, etc. given they're all parts of the main board, but batteries, screen, and main board could be user replaceable parts, and the fans could be cleanable. I doubt you'd sacrifice much space making the flash, ram, cpo, and gpu all user replaceable too.
Why should more than one company make a MacBook Air however? You need enough sp
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They don't make computers the way they used to. Older 486s and Pentium 1s were sturdier and lasted longer.
Goddam culture of waste. Green my ass.
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> How about building computers that are meant to last instead of being meant to be thrown away and "recycled" after 3 years? ...then you will likely want to upgrade something or perhaps just replace a broken component.
Wirth's Law (Score:3)
How about building computers that are meant to last
That wouldn't work because of Wirth's Law [wikipedia.org]. As computers become faster, new versions of software become slower due to new features or due to new language or library features that trade off programmer time for runtime. You can't upgrade the software because the new version's system requirements exceed your hardware, and you can't keep using your existing software on a public network because someone has discovered a critical security defect after the software's announced end of life.
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My company-that-/.-loves-to-hate laptop is two months short of 5 years and if it wasn't for upped requirements for the games I play I still wouldn't be considering a new one yet.
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How about building computers that are meant to last instead of being meant to be thrown away and "recycled" after 3 years?
I'm writing this on a Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop from 2001 - A P3 with 768 meg of RAM running streamlined XP. Works perfectly well for most things. Runs Office 2000 very well, plays DVDs well. About the only things that run very poorly on it are the 'new' Slashdot and Firefox. IE 7 works fine. as does Chrome.
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Funny thing that is. The greenest thing you can do is double the life of a device. When you do that, you effectively cut the energy and resources for manufacturing in half as well as the transportation costs and sales overhead. Finally, you cut input to landfills in half (let's face it, they don't actually recycle those things, they just send them off to a "recycler" in a country that doesn't actually regulate dumping).
Manufacturers tend to advertise "green" based on practically anything but that. They are
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Good luck with that.
Laptop manufacturers (yes, all of them) want to make disposable machines. Not only is it cheaper to make them that way, it encourages users to buy new rather than upgrade.
In the past, computer makers had to cater to the geek market, and the geeks wanted to be able to tinker. Although the Slashdot crowd refuses to accept it, the geek market is tiny relative to the mass market.
You must mistake the laptop market with the Apple market, and users by Apple-customers.
Almost all laptop users understand that they at some point would want a bigger harddrive, but don't necessarily need a new screen. And that would actually convince people to upgrade some hardware while they would never buy a new laptop (not yet), which means some people will see a business-model in this idea.
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aaand the HDD & wireless card are the two parts in most laptops that are standardized & replaceable... Some models the HDD has only 2 screws, Many it has it's on door, some you have to dis-assemble the machine to get at it, but almost all use a standard 2.5" SATA.
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MXM graphics boards?
still, Shuttle showed of some laptop board shapes that they hoped to push as "standard" a year or so ago.
Not sure if it got any traction so far tho.
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It took me ten minutes to swap the hard drive on my early-2009 (replaceable battery) Macbook Pro. From the looks of my friend's later model non-replaceable battery MBP, it would be a few minutes more because the screws on the bottom cover have to come out. It would probably take me longer to swap drives on most desktop machines of any make.
I believe GP's point might have been more about how Apple users are thought to just replace hardware as an assembly rather than upgrade piecemeal like "almost all laptop
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I doubt I'd ever go to even the minimal trouble just for more space. I'd just wait until it was time for a new machine.
Or buy a portable for the things that were taking up piles of space (pics, vids, etc) that I really don't need to carry around all the time anyway. I'm not even all that squeamish about taking apart my laptop (just replace the fan actually, which as the video illustrates is quite a process) and I've got thinkpad with a pullout drive, but it's not worth the cost or hassle of transferring things from one hd to another.
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It took me ten minutes to swap the hard drive on my early-2009 (replaceable battery) Macbook Pro [...] It would probably take me longer to swap drives on most desktop machines of any make.
Then you are doing something wrong.
Hard drive replacement of a good quality screwless desktop case is about 1 minute.
A half decent case (say a Dell optiplex is 5 minutes tops.)
The only way it should take more than 9 minutes to swap a hard drive on a PC would be if someone built a gaming rig instead of a piece of cr
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I used to work as an Apple tech years ago and the sheer number of things that we saw and had to deal with on their laptops was actually far worse than the typical PC competitors. Special screws or tools(Mac Mini anyone?), impossible locations, nothing marked with arrows... It was a major fight for us in the service department to even do our job. By comparison, the old OS8/9 Apple laptops, as unreliable as they were, came apart in minutes. Usually there were 6-8 screws, a couple near the keyboard, and th
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My g73 has an access panel with 2 screws, then you can see ram, hdd, pcie, and some of the (replaceable) video card.
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...except Apple products are THE WORST when it comes to being servicable.
They aren't any more reliable either. Or any better at standing the test of time and not becoming quickly obsolete even if they don't break.
This would be an obvious area for Apple to "innovate" in.
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Have you ever owned or opened one up to service one?
I've stripped down multiple Apple laptops, from the G3 and earlier generation up to the Intel era. They're no more difficult to service than PC laptops, and no quicker to go "obsolete" compared to PC laptops. The metal (and thick polycarbonate bodies of the old ones) they use are pretty rugged in the notebook arena (especially compared to the plastic bodies of many PC laptops), although they are clearly not indestructible and a couple of models have had "c
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I did a G3 iBook - had an old 600Mhz G3 and replaced the HD a couple of times.
It eventually gave up the ghost when someone cracked the screen hinge mounting and I figured it was time for an upgrade.
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You sound like someone who has never owned an Apple computer EVER. Their case designs have always been brilliant and serviceable, all the way back to the Apple II. The Apple laptops are every bit as serviceable as another vendor's laptop (which is to say, you can replace the memory, laptop, and battery). Not sure where you're coming from with this.
From Apple's support site:
The battery in these MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models should only be replaced by an Apple Authorized Service Provider. Please do not attempt to replace the battery in your Apple portable computer yourself if it is on this list: MacBook Pro MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009) MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009) MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009) MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009) MacBook Air MacBook Air (Mid 2009) MacBook Air (Late 2008) MacBook Air (Original) MacBook MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010) MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009)
Oh and I believe every laptop has the ability to be replaced :)
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Uh huh, yeah. My Dell, push two tabs and the keyboard is out. MacBook (or iBook) you're looking at about 18 screws, some models a mix of torx and philips, plus some that are just at really bad places to get to (the ones behind the metal tab that covers the ram)... and even then you have an unscrewed top case that still doesn't want to come off.
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Also... (Score:2)
That thing is a relatively chunky system even compared to some laptops in the market that are lamented as too large.
A manufacturer would find a customer base that rounds to zero with an offering like this.
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Cheaper assembly (Score:3)
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Hmm... (Score:2)
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Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
If there was a laptop out there using that, Id buy
It's called an iPad. The keyboard is so separated that is isn't even included by default.
No iPad for me (Score:3)
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You've lost me. The iPad accepts any Bluetooth keyboard. What has "Apple's developer agreement" got to do with an external keyboard?
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The iPad accepts any Bluetooth keyboard. What has "Apple's developer agreement" got to do with an external keyboard?
Keyboard or no keyboard, the applications that I would want to run are still banned from the App Store.
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The totally separable keyboard concept alone was really cool. If there was a laptop out there using that, Id buy.
No its not. Just buy a wireless keyboard. The fact of the matter is, the only things that a consumer can't replace in a laptop is the screen, CPU and mainboard. I mean easily. The harddrive and ram are easily replaceable by anyone who cares to. This is basically just a feel good video of a trio of college students who don't understand the market well enough to make something useful.
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Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is, the only things that a consumer can't replace in a laptop is the screen, CPU and mainboard.
And the battery. And the keyboard. And the optical drive...
Sure, for these you can still get a spare part. At least as long as it's new and not too obscure. That's different from being able to replace it with something new and different, though. I think this sounds like a fantastic idea. Cheaper, more flexible hardware. If somebody would force it down the manufacturers' throats I would be happy. :)
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All the optical drives in laptops are pretty standard parts.
I have dropped a few random whitebox ones into people who wanted upgrades on their old powerbooks that didn't have DVD-R drives.
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If somebody would force it down the manufacturers' throats I would be happy. :)
Commie. Socialist. Your mother wears army boots.
Now that I've insulted you, let me just point you to the error in your thinking. You WANT "somebody" (a governmental agency, perhaps) to first figure out what's 'cheaper and more flexible' and then force everyone to follow that, and only, that program? You want a COMMITTEE of a GOVERNMENTAL agency to figure out what's 'cheaper and more flexible' and then force everyone to follow that, and only that, program? You want a some LOBBYIST talking to a COMMIT
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No its not. Just buy a wireless keyboard. The fact of the matter is, the only things that a consumer can't replace in a laptop is the screen, CPU and mainboard.
You forgot RAM. RAM is usually at or near the max of what the machine is capable of holding if you buy the machine in a 'capable' configuration. The "default"/minimum for the machine is usually half that. It gives you very few upgrade options. Considering laptops are usually roughly 2/3rds as capable (or less) of a comparably priced desktop (disk speed, CPU, RAM/RAM upgrade options), there's not a lot that can be done to make it go another mile when it's time to replace it.
Also, consider that laptop display
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Power sockets. Power sockets are the #1 repair request I get on laptops. It's insane how much I have to charge for replacing a $3 part to make it worth my while to open up a laptop.
Why naming it Finland? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading TFA it quite clearly says "Students from Stanford and Finland's Aalto University", so a much more proper way to say it would've been "Stanford and Aalto University of Finland". (since most of the readers have probably never even heard of Aalto University) How would the summary of "Aalto and United States cooperate on project to..." sound?
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why (Score:3)
This type of machine will appeal to a select group of people. Desktop macs starting in the late 90's were more easily expandable and easier to work on than any desktop PC. A single latch opened the machine. Hard drives were exposed at the bottom, memory was right there. No one cared. For a long time the powerbooks were reasonable easy to work on. Once the cover was open, secured with Torx, it was pretty easy to replace a hard disk, replace a keyboard, replace an wireless card, replace pretty much everything. Just like all machines, though replacing anything would be 10% the cost of the machine, so many opted to buy a new machine, or get Apple Care for 15% of the machine and have Apple fix it for three years, which would mean a four year lifetime.
But then no one cared preferring to buy a cheaper machine even though it was less elegant to upgrade.
Thinkpads (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost all components, except the Processor,Motherboard and screen are CRU's
Making the Screen and Processor a CRU shouldnt be too difficult(Its not very difficult as of now either), cant say about the Motherboard.
By Thinkpads, I mean the real thinkpads(T,X,W Series)
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The screen, CPU and system board are often FRUs too, and the assembly instructions are even in the manual (which could be better, but at least exists). You can pretty much do a full gut/rebuild if you're inclined to (or like me and like your thinkpad tablet and don't much like the other options on the market.)
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FRU= Field Replacable Unit -- Does not need special equipment to replace, though it may require specialised skills
CRU = Customer replacable Unit -- Very simple to replace, something like a max of 4 screws..(dont remember the exact definition)
OT: Saw an old Thinkpad, one of the models with folppy drives functional with Win 95 a few weeks back..
Hmm Deja Vu. (Score:2)
Deja Vu.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/11/08/1717232/Bloom-Laptop-Designed-For-Easy-Disassembly?from=rss [slashdot.org]
Oh right.
Apple, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know Mac is a magic word and answer to world peace and all. And the song is cute.
But really, do they have a clue? Did the guy try to open up a Macbook? It's worse than his HP. The official Apple answer to cleaning the fan is to buy a new computer :)
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The new ones are really easy.
The toughest one I've done is the 12" Powerbook and even that's not too bad. Certainly it't on a par with the HP laptop in the video though - it's not like taking a laptop apart is like replacing the batteries in your TV remote.
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I know Mac is a magic word and answer to world peace and all. And the song is cute.
But really, do they have a clue? Did the guy try to open up a Macbook? It's worse than his HP. The official Apple answer to cleaning the fan is to buy a new computer :)
Right. That's why there are dozens of posts here (and hundreds on previous threads, we've really attacked this poor little meme before on many an occasion) discussing stripping MacBooks. Yes, you have to do it in a sequence. No, you can't just start unscrewing things until the correct module falls out of the bottom (typical Dell / HP dis assembly protocol). It's not hard. There are even instructional videos. Get over it.
WIll require legislation (Score:4, Interesting)
before the manufacturers will do it... same as the WEEE regulations had to come in before they would finally take back their broken items... it will take legislation to force them to design for disassembly and design for repair... currently, they hide behind other product liability regulations where they can use "scary" labels and weird proprietary fasteners to prevent the owner from taking the machine apart...
my new netbook has a "warranty void if tampered with" label over one screw hole which effectively prevents me from swapping out the hard disk and sticking a new one in to put a clean Linux install on (thus keeping the original disk ready to slip back in if needed).
Being a fully "qualified" geek who has built systems from scratch since almost day one of the personal computer revolution this sad fact really annoys me as I'm perfectly competent to fix things if I can get at them...
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Or you could plug in a USB hard disk, dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt//disk-image bs=4M.
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nothing requires legislation.
There is plenty competition out there in the computer market to have whatever you want and prices reflect the differences.
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whatever YOUR definition of a 'good keyboard' is apparently is not selling, so competition does suffice.
Also you can buy a freaking separate keyboard.
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for a laptop? that defeats the entire point of the laptop form factor...
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You can never have everything perfect for YOU in anything. I like DELL keyboards.
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yes it is an MSI wind U135DX; was going cheap as an end of line stocck clearance sale... anyway... the label clearly states "warranty sticker void if tampered", if they'd meant to allow user HDD and RAM upgrades, then they should have added hatches for this.
PS. has anyone managed to get wireless working in Linux with the RT3090 (MS-6891) module?
And it will be a failure.. (Score:3)
Many others tried the "modular" laptop design. result, everyone ignored it. there is no video card standard, there is no formfactor standard, no screen standard... etc...
So we get the mildly upgradeable laptops, most do away with a processor socket and go with a bga soldered to the board to save $0.32 per unit made eliminating processor upgrades.
It's a great exercise in though and design, but in reality cheap and custom is what everyone will stick to.
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So we get the mildly upgradeable laptops, most do away with a processor socket and go with a bga soldered to the board to save $0.32 per unit made eliminating processor upgrades.
High-speed sockets are expensive, and a mobile CPU socket would probably be at least a few dollars in quantity nowadays. The bigger problem is it would add thickness, weight and failure points.
Kinda sorta (Score:3)
Maybe not quite as modular and able to be disassembled as what the they're going for in the article, there is at least one manufacturer called Clevo out there making barebones, totally upgradable laptops at the premium level. Granted they use mobile components, but CPU and GPU are discrete, up to 3 hdds and 4 sticks of ram in some cases, a mini pcie slot, etc.
They actually offer one that allows you to use desktop i7 processors.
Clueless high-school optimism (Score:4, Informative)
What a piece of clueless high-school optimism this project is.
They wrap the innards of a netbook into the a casing regular size casing. Look at the space wasted on the fastenings for the screen bezel and the additional thickness added by all those thick plastic sheets between motherboard and keycaps. With that much space and weight wasted, at least they could have gone on the full eco-trip and made the casing out of cardboard or recycled wood. They totally miss the main selling point of a laptop: Small and light.
At least the project leadress was blond and pleasant to look at. But to improve the video, they should have cut the scenes where the geek or the invention appeared.
To sum it up: rather worthless - except for blondie if one is attracted to the type.
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To me, that laptop seems very compact. I suppose they u
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I was thinking much the same thing. Plus, rest assured that if it comes apart that easily on the workbench... it'll come apart even faster when you drop it or when it gets knocked off a desk. Not to mention those kids of 'slip fasteners' (or whatever the technical terms is for things held together by friction and a modest amount of spring tension) tend to wear out and loosen pretty quickly under real world use.
Bloom Laptop Designed For Easy Disassembly (Score:3)
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DIY disassembly isn't for everyone, and even where it is possible the guides are not always available, but your mention of this gave me a brainstorm. A professionally molded modular kit might be very attractive to the kind of hobbyists who play with small form factor enclosures.
Dell did/does this already (Score:2)
A friend of mine had a laptop from Dell with a modular slot that would accommodate a 3.5" floppy drive or a slot-load CD/DVD disc drive. The laptop package came with both and promised other accessories were available.
Aside from this, hdd, and ram; what else would you like to upgrade in your average laptop? I have seen Gigabit Ethernet via ExpressCard Slot [ebay.com], clunky video card solution [sewelldirect.com] and a few vendors sell USB 2.0 sound cards that beat laptop audio for performance.
These are certainly clunky solutions that
not good enough (Score:2)
Things I would like to upgrade in my laptop that aren't normally upgradeable:
* motherboard (I'm OK with video chipset being on this)
* cpu - a few models allow this, but the upgrade path is very narrow
* LCD - it is offered as a factory option for some premium laptops
You can argue all you want about how difficult it is, or how "clunky" it would be. But I believe such arguments indicate a lack of imagination.
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what it sacrifices (Score:2)
You're gaining easier upgrading, recycling, and service. None of these directly benefits the manufacturer.
What you are giving up:
- lower cost
- smaller size
- greater durability
And to a lesser degree these designs usually have fewer built-in features because space cannot be fully taken advantage of to cram in little extras like bluetooth or surround sound.
We've seen this idea pitched a few times here before and nobody wants to talk about all the tradeoffs they'll have to make. Manufacturers don't like it. I
Do we need this? - they already exist... (Score:2)
I get through laptops pretty regularly, (life on the road + 4 kids), so don't buy expensive ones - cheapest with the biggest screen. Then I swap out the big memory and hard-drives that I used to upgrade the fried one. Easy to do, since most laptop chassis from big manufacturers are designed to be easy to build to order...
I find that cheap laptop + home upgrade = plenty fast PC for peanuts...
Finns. (Score:2)
Dell and Lenovo already more or less do this (Score:2)
It's not up to the level of geek fantasy what-a-white-box-laptop-could-be. However, for practical purposes, if you get one of the big-chassis Thinkpads or Dell Latitudes (in the case of Dell, this would be a Latitude E-series today) then a ton of parts are interchangeable and upgradeable between models in the same chassis series. And it's been that way since the Latitude C-series at least. They're a lot easier to work on than the consumer-model laptops, too.
These days I just buy disposable junk like ever
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I don't think there's any technical reason to make common maintenance tasks like replacing smashed screens, bad inverters and broken keyboards so fiddly, even if those components are non-standard.
I'll go further and say that for most laptops (say 14" or greater screen and 22mm thick keyboard section) there's no practical reason not to adopt a standard form factor for components because there's plenty of room. Naturally if you want to make something thinner than has ever been done before then you're talking
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"form factor for components because there's plenty of room"
If's there's plenty of room and it's not there for cooling or structural reasons that is a design failure. If you want to pay extra to go back to the days of luggables I won't stop you but I shouldn't have to pay extra to make use of advancements that make a laptop better at its purpose for existing, being portable.
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I'm not sure why we'd have to return to the era of luggables, any more than choosing a standard form factor desktop PC means we have to go back to the era of minicomputers.
There is plenty of room because electronics are smaller than they were twenty years ago, but the average hand remains the same size. Manufacturers have responded by making things thinner, but after some point the consumer would benefit more from standardization than the next increment of thinning. I think we've past that point.