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Comment by heelix | Hacker News Reader

I just updated my personal laptop with the dell xps 17 largely because it has a glorious 16:10 screen. My only complaints with the machine is the tiny torx screws on back are very fragile - got an M.2 drive waiting to go in it so I can do my linux install. Lovely screen, decent keyboard and trackpad. All in all, pretty happy with it.

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I stripped a couple of screws on my XPS 13 and was about to break the bottom panel out of anger & frustration. Instead I bought a new, quality set of screwdrivers and managed to open it, then replaced torx screws with phillips head M2x3 screws. Highly recommend.

Torx is much more stable than philips head.

To add to this, Phillips screws are designed to cause the screwdriver to cam out. This is done so you can’t over torque the screw hole. This also makes them really annoying sometimes.

No, it was found that they have a tendency to cam out and it was later claimed that cam-out was a feature not a bug.

Regardless, using Pozidrive, JIS, Torx or similar is better for your soul.

Torx, Philips, whatever, we can all agree that they're both 10x better than Allen-head screws.

Weird. I bought a torx screwdriver to open my new XPS 13, and the screwdriver stripped. I bought a better screwdriver, and didn't have any problems with the screws or screwdriver after that.

(Stripped screwdriver was Husky brand from Home Depot, better screwdriver was a less-expensive, higher-quality one from Harbor Freight.)

Can confirm Home Depot/Husky did not have a happy ending on one screw. Which Harbor Freight set you pick up?

(was getting ready to mix the epoxy for the one screw/bit)

Pittsburgh Pro, 34 pc. precision screwdriver

The label is on the back. The front is a clear lid which shows the flexible extension, a straight extension, the screwdriver (black and green), then four rows of bits.

It's a pretty decent set. It's kind of funny though, the warning label on the back says to wear "heavy duty work gloves during use."

(A bit off topic) Two months ago, on reddit there was interesting finding and discussion about low quality screws in Dell laptops [0]. Also, if you look for "screw" phrase in r/Dell you will might find that problem is more common than occasional and touches many models, especially noticeable in XPSes.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/gf520r/xps_9570_aliex...

Working on most laptops is relatively easy but you still need couple relatively inexpensive tools.

If you ever venture into disassembling a laptop I would highly suggest some protection against static electricity. Most damage from static discharge on induced current is not immediately apparent but may manifest itself in crashes, slowdowns and other ways.

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