Repair goes mega mainstream with the launch of Lenovo’s new T-series business laptops, which earned our highest honor with a 10/10 repairability score.
I once bought a HP Elitebook on the basis of a very good repairability score from iFixit. It was a shit laptop but the big problem was that as it started breaking I found it impossible to find parts for it. It doesn’t matter if it’s held together by torx screws with no glue if you can’t actually get any parts.
I had an HP laptop at work where the keyboard went haywire. I saw a replacement keyboard online and thought “hey, why not, I’ll just replace it”. I didn’t even look up any videos or anything because I’d never think there would be a problem. So after needing to disassemble everything to get to the front plate, I was very happy to find out that the keyboard is riveted to it (about 20 or so rivets). I looked up a video and they suggested drilling out every rivet and then replacing them. I had never been so frustrated with a piece of technology before. Luckily, a can of contact cleaner solved the problem
Occasionally it’s cheaper to buy a second Lenovo laptop on eBay than it is to buy a replacement part…also from eBay. Found this out with mine recently: mainboard was bad, equivalent board was $500, identical laptop with damaged chassis was $300. Bought the second laptop and swapped the mainboard into the good chassis, but now I also have spare a WiFi card, DIMM, keyboard, touchpad, battery, and screen. I’d call that a win.
Sure the parts I needed weren’t available. Which is probably the problem with these iFixit scores. They should really wait for the laptop to be a few years old and then look and see if the stuff that’s actually breaking on the laptop are actually repairable with the parts available.
For this particular laptop even though it had a really good iFixit score, I couldn’t even buy a new touchpoint nub (or whatever HP calls it). The old one completely disintegrated but the nub was different than other HP laptops, so the ones I tried to buy (even for other elitebooks) wouldn’t fit. The nub the laptop needed simply wasn’t available anywhere.
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I once bought a HP Elitebook on the basis of a very good repairability score from iFixit. It was a shit laptop but the big problem was that as it started breaking I found it impossible to find parts for it. It doesn’t matter if it’s held together by torx screws with no glue if you can’t actually get any parts.
I had an HP laptop at work where the keyboard went haywire. I saw a replacement keyboard online and thought “hey, why not, I’ll just replace it”. I didn’t even look up any videos or anything because I’d never think there would be a problem. So after needing to disassemble everything to get to the front plate, I was very happy to find out that the keyboard is riveted to it (about 20 or so rivets). I looked up a video and they suggested drilling out every rivet and then replacing them. I had never been so frustrated with a piece of technology before. Luckily, a can of contact cleaner solved the problem
That’s surprising but so least Lenovo sells parts directly so you can skip eBay (though probably more expensive ofc)
Occasionally it’s cheaper to buy a second Lenovo laptop on eBay than it is to buy a replacement part…also from eBay. Found this out with mine recently: mainboard was bad, equivalent board was $500, identical laptop with damaged chassis was $300. Bought the second laptop and swapped the mainboard into the good chassis, but now I also have spare a WiFi card, DIMM, keyboard, touchpad, battery, and screen. I’d call that a win.
Did you go to their parts website? They sell parts for even their shitty(er) laptops.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/parts-store/
Sure the parts I needed weren’t available. Which is probably the problem with these iFixit scores. They should really wait for the laptop to be a few years old and then look and see if the stuff that’s actually breaking on the laptop are actually repairable with the parts available.
For this particular laptop even though it had a really good iFixit score, I couldn’t even buy a new touchpoint nub (or whatever HP calls it). The old one completely disintegrated but the nub was different than other HP laptops, so the ones I tried to buy (even for other elitebooks) wouldn’t fit. The nub the laptop needed simply wasn’t available anywhere.