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Comment by sliken | Hacker News Reader

New? Using epoxy to make batteries hard to replace and other tweaks to make other unreliable parts hard to replace. Popular recent choices are keyboards and backlights.

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Not everyone uses Macbooks. There are plenty of laptops with easily replaceable batteries and sane keyboards. Not even talking about real computers, where you can replace everything without any tools.

But at the same time, I'm considering replacing my 2015 HP laptop because my "A" key stopped working, and the cost to replace the keyboard is 25% the cost of a new laptop, which I'll need anyway in another year or two even if the keyboard were fixed.

Well I don't know what's up with your model, but I can get a replacement keyboard for my seven year old laptop for $25.

15" laptops that are 2" thick are largely easy to work on and get replacement parts.

However the popular "ultra" books and similar have to integrate more heavily to get close to 1". Even fans become hard to replace. Often there's no dimms (so you can't replace or add ram), even storage can be on the motherboard.

They are close to disposable unfortunately.

I've had multiple ultrabooks too, measurably under an inch, and their keyboards were both thin and also easily popped out. It's disappointing to hear that many manufacturers are doing it differently.

Paying 25% of a new laptop to increase the lifespan of your current laptop by 25-50% is a fairly rational decision, especially if you factor in the environmental impact of replacing the whole machine.

that pretty disappointing, i would expect a bit better from HP.

is it a consumer grade or corporate model?

Sure. But CPU manufacturers focus on where the money is, and today that's servers and laptops. While not everyone buys apple, an ever larger fraction of laptops are epoxying batteries and replacing socketed cables with hard wired parts. Just like cellphones where it's pretty common for battery life or USB failure to result in requiring a replacement.

Who is using epoxy with batteries?

Apple’s iPhone 7 Smart Battery Case is epoxy sealed to make it water resistant

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