Microsoft vows to make its Surface laptops, Xbox kit easier to fix by 2022 Microsoft has pledged to help folks independently repair their own broken Surface laptops and Xbox consoles by making spare parts and information more easily available by the end of 2022. Tech giants like Microsoft and Apple have been criticized for making it difficult for customers to fix their own gizmos. Replacement parts …
If Microsoft or somebody in it recognizes the damage the lack of repairibility is doing to users and the environment, which they're at least pretending, the first step is to not take steps that will lead to more obsolescence. I think you know where I'm going. Landfills filled with broken Surface tablets is bad enough, but their abandonment of perfectly serviceable hardware by cutting Windows support will fill them even faster. There are only so many people will be buying to put Linux or BSD on, and Microsoft, not the hardware manufacturers, is causing the problem this time. True, by continuing to support Windows 10 for a while, they're making that process longer and therefore harder to see, but that isn't a solution.
“We also have a longstanding commitment to building high-quality, innovative, and safe devices that customers love."
Like the Windows phone and Vista?
"We have been taking steps for years to improve device repairability and to expand the available choices for device repair."
At least they don't glue the Xbox 360 together. They could make it compatible with more hard drives. I'm not sure about the XBone.
My Xbox one X's (living room and study) have both have had to have the HDMI timer chip fail after they stopped working without warning. Its a common issue, and an easy fix if you capable of board level soldering, I'm not but there are companies who do it for you. One failed less than 2 weeks after I bought it new with less than 20 or so hours use on it.
Its not only the cost and availability of parts, its designing the system to last, not taking the route of using the cheap components you can that may help the maker keep competitive price wise, but if they fail after 18 months and they charge more for a repair that the console costs (its £294 for a Xbox 1 X repair which is not that far off about what they cost new before they were discontinued) then don't be surprised if it your customer base looks at the competitors.
Did no one learn from the BadCaps / Capacitor plague issues in the mid 2000's that sometimes you can go too cheap.
Perhaps, just perhaps, they could stop gluing Surface Books together so they were completely and utterly lost when they had the smallest issues? I note V1 was glued, V2 finally unscrewed (as long as your issue was with the keyboard side) and V3 is now glued again (thanks!). iFixIt referred to it as the least-repairable laptop ever. You have to spend 90 mins heating/prising and ruining the irreplaceable fabric-based keyboard off the base unit if you want to get under it in a grade-A own-goal for planned obsolescence.
I'm genuinely disappointed and angry that every time I lose a key on a keyboard or the microphone stops working, the thing is landfill.
Change starts with design. Fix your shit (attitude) Microsoft.
Change starts with design.
Indeed it does.
Then again, demand is created by choice and eventually purchase of the consumer...
... brought to me by a neighbor who asked, "Why has the screen detached itself from the tablet? Can you fix it?"
Mind you, the screen is still attached, but it is hovering about 6mm above the rest of the unit. Why? The battery blew up like a balloon. And no, I can't fix it. It is held together entirely by glue.
The only reason the screen didn't crack is that the battery heated up so much while failing, or inflating, that it melted some of that glue. Now that it's cooled off? The glue has solidified again so there is no way to get the thing apart to fix it.
Do you suppose they'll replace all these units? Not on your life.
You know the saying: Hell is full, and guilt-ridden engineers are walking the Earth.
How about the rest of the Surface range? Like the Pro 7.
Continual rotate issues, continual USB device failure issues, continual keyboard disconnects (possibly related to rotate issues).
Plus continually getting very warm, hot, when not actively doing anything.
Would never have another one.
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