Fix a laptop screen? That'll cost more than a new laptop

[Aztec_Cardiologist]

Hm. I recently replaced the screen in my 9 year old Thinkpad. Granted, it’s heavy and the battery doesn’t last long enough to really be useful (I can’t be bothered to replace that), but as a moveable (rather than mobile) computer it’s still pretty good with the new FHD panel. Panel cost about $50, the procedure took about 30 minutes and a normal philips screwdriver.

[westcarleton]

Everything is like that. Repair guy told me it would cost $1300 to replace a bearing on my clothes washer, more than it cost new. I’ll do it myself, thanks.

[Hubber]

@ficuswhisperer

I’d argue that these Macs were designed with repairability in mind, not user-serviceability. There’s a big difference there. On many of those old AIO Macs, you can’t even open the case without a special long-shank screwdriver. If Steve Jobs had his way, the Mac would have been hermetically sealed with no expandability whatsoever.

Meh. I get your point, but the special screwdriver was dirt cheap and easy to buy, and the machines were clearly designed for the user to easily access everything. Anything that wasn’t soldered to a circuit board was completely accessible.

@ficuswhisperer

About the only Macs that have ever had some actual user-serviceability in mind were the tower models, but even with those your ability to self-service is often hampered by bespoke components that you can only get from Apple.

I never owned any of the tower models and I won’t claim to remember each and every time I cracked open a machine to do something in the '90s, but I can say with certainty that I was always able to do what I wanted with a machine (unless it was something ridiculous, like install more RAM than the motherboard was capable of addressing) and I never once bought a bespoke part from Apple. The only time in my life that I have ever spoken to an Apple technician is when I needed a warranty replacement of a defective motherboard.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that Apple’s product line of the '90s was as user-serviceable as, say, a built-from-scratch PC, but it was far closer to that than any other off-the-shelf computer from a major brand that I have ever seen. Nowadays, Clevo laptops come pretty close, though I guess it’s easy to argue they aren’t a major brand. All of that said, I’m basing this on my experience as a consumer and it’s entirely possible there are well known examples of far more user-serviceable machines that I am simply not aware of…

@ficuswhisperer

If Steve Jobs had his way, the Mac would have been hermetically sealed with no expandability whatsoever.

It does appear that he eventually got his way, more or less, but that’s also why I never went back to Apple products.

[Hubber]

@RobJ

Ha! That’s my exact story too! It was the new model with the high density floppy drive, 20MB HD and 1 MB RAM. I opened that thing up once I had more money and brought it up to 2.5 MB of RAM (hello, Multifinder!).

I bought exactly the same model and upgraded the RAM for exactly the same reason – I felt pretty special having a machine that could multitask! Though I went whole-hog and got the full 4 MB, then was slightly sad because I had one less excuse to crack open the machine and tinker with the innards.

I also upgraded the hard drive and was shocked at how fast I ran out of space. I can remember many years later, when I had a newer Mac, bragging to a fellow Mac enthusiast about my 170 MB drive – it will take me the rest of my life to fill that, I said! On the bright side, I have yet to fill a TB drive before it fails on me, so I’ve got that going for me…

[Brainspore]

I’ve had far more success repairing my first-generation iPhone SE than I ever had repairing my Android phone simply because the iPhone has a big enough market share to make it worthwhile for third-party vendors to sell replacement parts.

[Otherbrother]

My ancient LG phone with a slide-out keyboard finally stopped being supported by my carrier due to VoIP updates at the cell towers, so this week I had to bite the bullet and buy myself a modern smartphone. I got a perfectly nice factory refurbished 2018 model Samsung Galaxy phone for just $24 (no contract or anything) which amazes me. It came with a new battery which probably costs half that, so I have to imagine that many, many phones out there would cost more to repair than to replace with an equivalent factory-refurbished model.

[VeronicaConnor]

I’m sure many people have had bad experiences with Apple repair-wise, but that has not been my experience at all. I’ve had them replace the camera in my iPhone SE twice. First time was $20 and the second time they did it for free as good will, even though the damage was my fault. They replaced the battery in one of my laptops for what felt like a reasonable price. I had a GPU go bad in an older one and they replaced the whole motherboard for free. It was a known issue with that model, but the recall had been over for a year so technically I should have paid, but they did it for free. I had a wi-fi unit die, and they couldn’t replace it without changing out the motherboard because there was a board revision, but they only charged me for the wi-fi part.

Also, all of these experiences involved strolling into a nice store and waiting 20 mins while they did it for me in the back. What other consumer product gives this level of repair experience? Your mileage may vary, but I’ve always found Apple stuff to be very pleasant repair-wise. Where would you even get an Android phone fixed? If my PC graphics card went bad, who would I even call?