IFIXIT gives the new Surface Laptop 0/10 repairability score

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Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop starts at $999.00 in the Microsoft Store. That price will get you a 3.1GHz i5 Intel Sky Lake processor, 4GB RAM, a 128G
[See the full post at: IFIXIT gives the new Surface Laptop 0/10 repairability score]

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woody

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Yea! Microsoft finally beats Apple, the previous record holder for worst items to repair! No doubt Apple, being #2 now, will work harder to regain their throne!

 

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Bill C.

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Kinda sad they worked so hard to make it LOOK like a Mac laptop but didn’t recreate Apple’s meticulous assembly techniques.   They just hit it with a hot glue gun instead.   I still marvel at the complexity of my seemingly simple Mac Mini’s innards.   Its like an electronic Dagwood Sandwich.

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Microshaft Surface to the tune of $999, it’ll be as popular as Windows 10.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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BobbyB

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Hmm…could this be the world’s first completely irreparable laptop?

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Abe Lincoln is quoted as telling the story of a farmer who had a five legged dog. Turned out, he called the tail a leg. The punchline:

“Calling it that does not make it so.”

I have seen laptops, and sirs, this is no laptop! (Which is another paraphrase of a famous quote about a politician comparing himself to some more famous politician.)

My ASUS tablet (2-in-1) is more repairable than this “laptop”.

-- rc primak

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Yes, for astute shoppers the similar touch enabled folding tablet form factor with keyboard, a few more ports and storage options can be had for about four or five hundred dollars less than the base model of the Surface Laptop.

If people want a covered device with a carpet or furry like sensation they choose from a variety of felts.

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I should say that felt isn’t fire retardant so that is a bad idea to attach it to a laptop.

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Wonder what the lifespan will be for one of those? And, what a nightmare to service them by the look of it.

Bet they won’t last as long as my HP DV5203TU laptop – been running trouble free for over 11 years now. Started with a 60GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM and Windows XP Professional.

Been upgraded over the years to the maximum 2GB RAM, a 128GB SSD and Windows 7 (it is running Linux Mint 17.3 at the moment).

So easy to change the hard drive, wireless card and RAM. Even the button battery for the motherboard is easy to change. Sure don’t make them like that anymore.

Carl D.

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BobbyB

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Why repair when you can buy another one @$1000 a pop. Profit nirvana. Did not occur to them how absurd that is. But then they are MS — non-absurd is difficult for them.

As I keep saying: much easier to monetize user data than competing to provide useful goods and services.

 

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Carl, I have a very similar laptop, a HP/Compaq M2000z, also on the Turion platform and with the same specs (except that yours appears to have a widescreen, while mine has a 4:3 display).  It’s still running well too, after 11 years, and is running 24 hours a day (though usually at idle).  It runs XP, but as it’s disconnected from the net, it’s not a problem.

I did replace the wifi card on this one with an Atheros Super-G.  I had to mod the BIOS to get it to boot, as (like so many HP and Lenovo laptops) it only boots with whitelisted wifi cards installed.  After editing the PCI ID, it worked fine.

My newer laptop is an Asus F8S series (originally F8Sp, but now I guess it’s F8Sn).  I’ve upgraded it to 8GB RAM (out of a maximum of 4MB according to Asus and Intel (chipset spec), replaced the HDD with a Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD (with SED enabled), replaced the troublesome Intel 4965AGN with an Atheros, then an Intel 7260 (also AGN) that is made to the same spec but actually works well and has drivers for Windows versions past 7.  I upgraded the 2.0 GHz CPU to 2.6GHz and upgraded the discrete GPU to a GTX220M.  I also replaced the keyboard, as the old one was worn out.

I also had to replace the motherboard, not because of a hardware failure, but because someone took too big a chance trying to hack the firmware on the old one and bricked it.  I… I mean, “he” knew it was a bad idea at the time… I can’t really fault the machine for that failure.  Fortunately, it was easy; this laptop is really simple to work on, and replacement parts are readily available for popular laptop models on the net.  I’m sure that it, like my Compaq, would get a “10” for repairability by iFixit if they were to rate it.

And, of course, the original battery is long gone.

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Shoot.  Again I did it!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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This iFixit teardown met my expectation, do not buy this thing.

At the ‘low’ end, four gigabytes is not enough when some store (Microsoft’s) games claim to need an extra two gigabytes for 64-bit to run on a device.

The things that might be reusable if they aren’t broken is the screen/camera assembly, the little speakers, fan, hinge, ports, maybe the keyboard, and headphone jack.

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Operating System. You forget the Operating System!!!
This has Windows 10 S.
You have to pay extra to get REAL Windows.

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BobbyB

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PKCano wrote:

You have to pay extra to get REAL Windows.

According to Microsoft, you can switch to Windows 10 Pro for free. Scroll down to “The best of Windows and Office”.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Yes, free, for a limited time.

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PKCano wrote:

You have to pay extra to get REAL Windows.

You can buy Windows 7 and 8.1 for it?

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

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You misunderstand. I meant Win10 Home or Pro. Who would put Win7/8.1 on a disposable machine?

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Cascadian

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Got it, that’s what the smiley meant.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

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$999 for a disposable laptop? WTG M$ do you think we are all made of money out here?

Fixing laptops at the best of time is a bit of a hit and miss affair, requiring almost “Micro-surgery” skills a good deal of patience and luck. The elementals such as changing batteries, RAM upgrades/reaseating, cracked screens and even swopping out HDD’s is normally quite time consuming but quite doable.

A laptop by its very nature is a portable computing device that gives an almost Workstation like experience no matter where it gets used and thus eminently better than, say an ipad or phone, for working with spreadsheets etc. and can can contain way more data, progs, and Apps. As its portable its subject to more “wear & tear” and hard knocks than a trusty old stationary Desktop. So right there it has to have an element of repairability and some ease of maintanance. Be it sucking out “Dust Bunnies” should the user be an habitual bed time user to fixing Bangs and scrapes of life on the road.

In these fraught times of air travel the very thought of consigning a little fragile razor thin valuble gadget to “stowed” baggage on an aircraft fills me with dread for productivity at the other end. (actually could be a good thing lol ) If you have watched how baggage is handled or the results at baggage claim, and thats if it makes it as luggage and/or laptops tend to disappear in to “thin air” especially with expensive items, you will know the benefits of having your fingers crossed when you turn it on for the first time. That coupled with cabin luggage bans on laptops to the Middle east and the widely touted ban of European flights being kicked around in to the US. Makes it not only impossible to travel with or work on a laptop using Air tavel with any degree of confidence. I “checked” one, suitably wrapped in clothes in my luggage, about 3-4 years ago for 3 leg flight as there was no need to work on the plane, well when I opened up my bag the laptop was fine however, it was like looking at the desktop though a “stained glass window” . Hmmm what to do? new screen $200 bucks or hook it up to an external monitor that was sitting in the closet for free. Well here it is although its travelling days are now over.

Yeah a 17 year veteren Compaq that has made it pretty much 3/4 of the way round the world, had countless encounters with Beer, more knocks than a Rugby player and a fair share of curious Hotel staff trying to look whats inside. Yeah seriously they do just enable “failed log in’s” log should you leave it unattended and running in your room. Dare I say “they dont make em like that any more” but looking at the new surface I have to say I would agree.

Give me a desktop every time at least they are easy to fix, seriously they really are no great Einstien learning curve to “pop the top” and all the “bits” (not the WUD services) are easy to source and reasonably priced, but to travel with a new Surface you will either need a support crew (same as a F1 pit crew) and a bag full of acessories, backups etc. Or a huge “cloud account” deep pockets, and be prepared to be up all night, jet lag permitting to be ready for, as M$ puts it, “That all important presentation.”

PS I hope @woody isnt giving a Surface laptop a “test drive” as apparently last heard heading off in to the depths of the former Khmer Kingdom and Jungle lol

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If you watched the laptop price trend, it’s up. It’s increasingly difficult to find upper models in the $500 range. Under $1000 is the best you can do. Yes, there are cheaper ones, but relatively under-performers for this day and age.

And this is in fact a general trend in all products and services. With the huge enrichment of the upper few and the reduction of the many to poverty, most of the money is with the former, not the latter. One of two societies is being written off.

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Prices are up for new laptops with new ‘features’ like no user replaceable/upgradeable storage, RAM, or batteries. What a wonderful advancement.

For a laptop, I buy off corporate lease Lenovo or Dell laptops. The corporate-level devices are generally more accessible for IT departments top configure and maintain. Lenovo Thinkpads are super simple to upgrade the RAM and drives, plus often have DVDs inside. They are a bit heavier, but more durable. They are readily available with the Win7 refurb license (Still!) or install the Linux flavor of your choice and off you go.

Since I am retired though, for travel, I have moved to an iPhone and an iPad with keyboard, unless I need to support my dSLR Camera. Then it is the Lenovo Thinkpad with Win7-64Pro. When Win7 goes out of support, it will become a Linux machine, but I no longer see a laptop in my future since the iPad.

I am not a Luddite or technophobe. As in cars and trucks, I just find it better, and financially advantageous, to let others shoulder the depreciation, plus be the beta testers and data-mining subjects.

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Bought 2 such Dells E7450 myself. Practically new, 3 years worth of support to boot.

Mfgrs are not looking for progress for users anymore — that’s hard. They’re looking for progress for themselves, which means increase profit without providing more for the $. And dispensable devices are up that alley.

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If you get it with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and i7 CPU, it rises to a lofty $2200 for a disposable laptop.

Other laptops, tablets, and 2 in 1s are difficult to service, but it was possible.  This laptop appears to be impossible to open up without destroying it.

I did some quick searching, and I found a page from Asus discussing Li-ion battery life.  While it may not be authoritative, it’s at least in the ballpark, I think.  According to them, a laptop used an average amount will go about one year before the battery capacity drops to 80% of the initial value.  Once it hits that point, the degradation accelerates rapidly, and by 1.5 years, it’s down to 20%.  For most people, the battery would be considered to be functionally dead before the capacity dropped to a fifth of what it was, so the service life (by this estimate) would be from 1-1.5 years.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I expect a bit more for $1000 to $2200 than about a year and a quarter.  Sure, you could use it on AC power all the time, but why get a thin and light if you’re just going to do that?

It’s simply unconscionable to charge people that much money for a device that is specifically designed to be impossible to repair.  Disposable items are CHEAP, like Bic pens… something that runs 1 to 2 grand isn’t cheap by any means, and when it contains consumable items like a battery and a SSD, there just isn’t any excuse for this.

A lot of people like to say that ultrabooks, phones, tablets, etc., have to be glued together and otherwise built in repair-unfriendly ways in order to make them as thin and light as possible, but is that really the whole reason?  Apple released an update that would brick iPhones that had already successfully been repaired with affordable (non-Apple OEM) parts, and that update didn’t make the iPhone any lighter or smaller.  Neither have Apple’s efforts to fight “right to repair” legislation across the US, obviously.  It’s clear that “people want light and thin, and that means unrepairable” has a degree of truth in it, but it’s also a shelter that unscrupulous hardware manufacturers can hide behind in order to force their users to toss away devices that are otherwise quite repairable.

Even with that in mind, Apple has not gone so far as to make their stuff impossible to get into without destroying it.  They use a lot of difficult to remove glue and such things, but a skilled hand can get into one to replace a battery or a cracked display.  This MS device is held together with small spot welds!

I would assume that most people who buy one of these are not aware that it is completely unrepairable… other ultrabooks and Surface devices1 can have the battery replaced, even if it’s not as easy as it should be, and that almost certainly is the frame of reference for any would-be buyer.  If they want to waste their money on fully disposable laptops, that’s their prerogative, but they should be aware that that is, in fact, what they are buying.

I don’t think this is going to go well for Microsoft.  If people are aware that the expensive laptop has a battery that will wear out in under two years and cannot be replaced at all, I don’t think they will buy it.  If they’re not aware, they will be someday when they try to take it in for a new battery, and there’s going to be a lot of anger at MS for going well beyond the industry-standard “glue it together so it’s hard to fix.”  It’s not like the OS market, where there are no real alternatives for people who need Windows-specific programs; there are tons and tons of laptops available.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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AlexEiffel

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Thing is, if there are enough buyers WHY shouldn’t they sell c..p?

Which is why so d**n important to eliminate education, knowledge and ability to reason.

If you ever wondered why the corporate world disregards education and substitutes job training for it, now you should understand why.

Edit for content

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Well, they say that it is unrepairable, yet they offer a service manual:

This teardown is not a repair guide. To repair your Microsoft Surface Laptop, use our service manual.

I agree with three of their “final thoughts”:

This laptop is not meant to be opened or repaired; you can’t get inside without inflicting a lot of damage.

The CPU, RAM, and onboard storage are soldered to the motherboard, making upgrades a no-go.

The battery is difficult and dangerous to replace, giving the device a limited lifespan.

I would NEVER purchase a laptop where I couldn’t easily replace the battery, the RAM, or the onboard storage (i.e. the hard drive / SSD).

And the cheapest version of this piece of junk is $999?

I’ll give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on their other “final thought”, because you hardly ever need to replace the headphone jack:

The headphone jack, while modular, can only be accessed by removing the heat sink, fan, display, and motherboard.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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If they would charge a couple hundred dollars for this “computer”, they wouldn’t get any opposition on it. But they are charging top dollar for a piece of junk.

This joke of a laptop is the sort of thing I warn my friends, family, neighbors, and customers to avoid at all cost.

I honestly thought Microsoft would never stoop to this level. I guess I should have learned when Microsoft was forcing Windows 10 onto people’s computers without their consent.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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To repeat what I posted on Thurrott.com about this…

“Welcome to Microsoft’s latest fast-release initiative… SURFACE-AS-A-SERVICE… That’s right, you get to replace your over-priced hardware every 6 months along with your OS! No thanks…”

Can’t believe I was only down-voted 4 times (so far)!  ?

Edit to remove HTML

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fp

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At least WaaS is $7/month. These go $1000 a pop. But there are so many uninformed, unable to reason masses out there, I would not be surprised if they bite. I mean, all these corporations that get rich from failures could not happen without them.

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Apple have been making US$ billions from their mostly unrepairable iPhones and walled-garden iOS/App Store.
… Seems M$ are trying to copy Apple with their Surface laptops and Win 10 S.

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They are not capable of even emulating good stuff, probably because they are incompetent to judge what’s good and bad and look only at the profit.

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Todays laptop standard:
Sacrifice everything to be thinner, price, speed, reparability, reliability, compatibility(upgrades, OS, etc..), DVD drive, ports.

When was the last decent laptop with more than 3 USB ports.

Apple’s turn to one up them, no ports all wireless. All ports are separate battery powered accessories which charge on the same wireless charger. (no replaceable batteries).

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Please stop helping them with comments like this one.

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The single replaceable thing is actually the user. He left for an actual laptop.

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Back in the late 1990s, there was the IBM Thinkpad 760. It was super easy to service — you would lift up the keyboard, and below it was the hard drive, etc. Simple. The only problem was, the Thinkpad 760 had LOTS of bugs. IBM was continually releasing BIOS upgrades for this computer.

If Lenovo ever got the bugs out of the 760, then they got themselves a really practical laptop.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Sorry, new terrible ideas are the new standard, what I said has been said before. But now you know before apple invents the new bad idea. Pretty soon your are going to be doing an excel spreadsheet on a normal sized smartphone with a software keyboard, at work.

New competitors should come to the rescue with good computers. Unfortunately the mass of consumers go to walmart and say “Isn’t that a great deal? I $370 computer on sale for $330. Lets see… it has a Celeron N3010 (permanently soldered on), 4GB onboard ram (no upgrades), single stream (no MIMO) wifi. Or could spend $120 more and get a Core i5-6200U in nearly the same semi-junk laptop” “No wait look over there! That one with the Atom E3826 is $15 cheaper!”

“When should I replace this computer?”
“Two years ago.”
“But I just bought it last week!”

(Celeron N3010 has similar performance to a Pentium D 830 from 2008)
(Core i5-6200U is well over 4 times faster than Celeron N3010)
(Atom E3826 is LESS than half as fast as Celeron N3010)

“But the used car salesman told me to look how bright the orange SALE sticker was. He said that’s how you can tell they are ‘ripe’ and get good gas mileage and won’t break out of warranty.”

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