Microsoft dabbles in self-repair with Surface devices now DIY-friendlier Microsoft has joined in with the self-repair trend and made available some replacement components for its Surface devices via the Microsoft Store, though only in a handful of countries to begin with. The Redmond giant's Surface line of laptops and tablets has been around for at least a decade, but the devices themselves have …
> “The pricing remains an issue - for example replacing a wi-fi module is $150 for the Surface Pro 9, which seems very pricey”
To say the least. The other day I paid $10 for a brand new high-end Intel WiFi 6E+Bluetooth module, delivered, from Amazon.
Is this Microsoft’s game plan? Offer parts, but make them so ridiculously expensive that no-one will ever bother? Then lobbying to kill the right-to-repair initiatives because “no-one buys the repair components”?
Still sounds better than the apple program here you have to supply serial numbers and such to even get parts for a device. Certainly under the apple program a repair shop can't buy and stock parts to provide quick service, they would have to get your device, order parts from apple, wait for them, then repair the device. Totally useless, but of course that's how Apple wants it to be. It has to sound like they are doing something while not actually doing it.
Not to mention the price of the components or the tools Apple says you have to use making it practically pointless to actually do it yourself (once you've bought the part, rented the tools and taken the time to see if it'll fix it, you might aswell have bought the new landfill device).
"If Microsoft is really serious about right to repair, they should extend the lifetime of its Windows operating system: their plans to discontinue Windows 10 in 2025 could leave millions of computers behind"
This is going to generate a huge pile of waste if it goes ahead. In my small business, I'll have to junk 5 PCs and 2 laptops, simply because of the arbitrary decision to prevent them from running Windows 11. I hope the EU gets on MIcrosoft's back about this, before it's too late.
If they really cared they would just drop the artificial hardware requirements in windows 11. My 11 year old thinkpad is running insider builds of windows 11, and has bee for years, and has never had an issue. Microsoft offered to install it back before they added the artificial requirements, and of course it installed fine, and still does. They don't have to continue to support windows 10, they can just let all the machines switch to 11 instead. Not a problem except they decided to make it one.
If you were on the prodcution releases, as most are, you would find that if it doesn't meet the hardware requirements it will refuse to install the annual feature updates. I found this in testing and tried every alternative I could think of, but the only thing which worked was a clean install. All totally unnecessary, but that's how they have deliberately designed it!
Simple answer is not to buy stuff that can't be repaired or upgraded easily.
I'm running an old Toshiba laptop that's had a new SSD replacing the original HDD and the memory increased by adding another memory chip.The machine has two convenient panels on the base which can be removed in about a minute using a simple crosshead screwdriver. The battery can be removed by sliding two clips across at which point it can be slid out. This machine is nearly indestructable.
My new HP also has two panels held by a couple of crosshead screws albeit that the battery is slightly more difficult to remove than the Tosh.
I looked at the M$ Surface and decided that it was over-priced for the specification and not easily repairable / upgradeable and so bought HP. Similar reason for not buying Apple despite quite liking the MacBook Air.
great idea, but does not apply to 99.99% of people, who don't repair even stuff that's easy to repair. They've been sold an idea that 'repair' is something likely to kill you (220V + DEATH), and best left to the magicians. But then, next year, a new shiny-shiny appears, and shines, so they grumble and open their wallet. This attitude would change ONLY IF we all got poor, and long-term poor, not just covid-poor, or brexit-poor. I'm thinking at least communism v 2.0 poor, but to be sure, WW3-poor. Then... MAYBE (but not for long!) We are a species of wasters.
I heard that Microsoft was making the Surface devices easier to repair as a selling point to contract with Apple anythhing.
But with the right-to-repair movement catching some momentum, I wondered if they are more motivated by a foreshadowing of compliance mandates.
So, I read the subtitle of this article as "Replacement components available in US, Canada, France--only for now"
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