17 replies to this topic

[warwagon]

When buying a new laptop I always look at the service manual to see how much of a pain is it to remove the hard drive. I will refuse to buy a laptop that doesn't allow to remove a simple cover on the back of the laptop to remove the hard drive. There is really no excuse for anything harder than that. Unless of course you have a really thin ultra book. But for a traditional laptop, you shouldn't have to remove the palm rest just to get to the hard drive

In this video I demonstrate a laptop which makes it a pain in the ass to remove a hard drive, and one that makes it extremely easy.

1st Laptop in this video is a Dell inspiron 15R
2nd Laptop is a HP Probook 4540s series

[episode]

Just did this yesterday on a 14z. Ridiculous.
I realize it helps them save space, but its time to ditch the optical drive. That takes up fully 30% of the internal space.

[TheReasonIFailed]

To be honest; you're comapring a consumer line laptop (Inspiron) to a business line laptop (Probook).

I can remove the HDD in any Dell Latitude series laptop in less than a minute.

[+Crisp]

All laptops should be designed with easy access to upgradable parts. It should be a requirement to be able to have easy access to RAM and the HDD without having to rebuild the damn thing.

[DPyro]

Best thing about my laptop is that pretty much any component is upgradable. Just put a SSD in my Aspire 6920G.

[warwagon]

TheReasonIFailed, on 12 December 2012 - 18:00, said:

To be honest; you're comapring a consumer line laptop (Inspiron) to a business line laptop (Probook).

I can remove the HDD in any Dell Latitude series laptop in less than a minute.

What it shows is that regardless if it's a business laptop, it can be made easily accessible. No reason not to.

[TheReasonIFailed]

warwagon, on 12 December 2012 - 18:33, said:

What it shows is that regardless if it's a business laptop, it can be made easily accessible. No reason not to.

Then there would be no reason to buy the $1500 laptop when the $600 laptop has almost the same features!!

[warwagon]

TheReasonIFailed, on 12 December 2012 - 18:35, said:

Then there would be no reason to buy the $1500 laptop when the $600 laptop has almost the same features!!

[TheReasonIFailed]

Whatev's!!!

[Detection]

They're not built to be easy user accessible / upgradable / repairable, they're built to be easiest / cheapest to manufacture / look appealing to consumers

[LogicalApex]

Wow Dell. Talk about a huge step backwards. No wonder I've just switched away from them for the first time in over 10 years of laptop buying.

episode, on 12 December 2012 - 18:00, said:

Just did this yesterday on a 14z. Ridiculous.
I realize it helps them save space, but its time to ditch the optical drive. That takes up fully 30% of the internal space.

Speak for yourself. I'd prefer my Optical Drive staying there on my laptop. For a variety of reasons. I won't be buying a laptop that lacks one in the foreseeable future.

TheReasonIFailed, on 12 December 2012 - 18:00, said:

To be honest; you're comapring a consumer line laptop (Inspiron) to a business line laptop (Probook).

I can remove the HDD in any Dell Latitude series laptop in less than a minute.

Not really a problem. My Dell Studio XPS 1647 (just upgraded from this machine to a Lenovo T530) has its HDD just as easily accessible and so has all of my previous Dell laptops. The Lenovo is my first "business" laptop. So, I don't think you're excuse for Dell is legitimate. Warwagon is right, there is no reason to make this as hard as they made it.

I thought Lenovo was annoying by placing one of my RAM slots under the KB. This was just insane to watch.

[warwagon]

LogicalApex, on 12 December 2012 - 18:54, said:

Wow Dell. Talk about a huge step backwards. No wonder I've just switched away from them for the first time in over 10 years of laptop buying.

But I did work on someones inspron, that had a service panel just like the one I showed on the video. It was held in by screws instead of those sliders but gave me access to all of the same components with very little effort. So they are doing it on SOME laptops.

[REM2000]

One of the reasons I loved the plastic macbooks they had excellent/easy access to the hard disks and ram

[episode]

LogicalApex, on 12 December 2012 - 18:54, said:

Speak for yourself. I'd prefer my Optical Drive staying there on my laptop. For a variety of reasons. I won't be buying a laptop that lacks one in the foreseeable future.

So buy an external.

[LogicalApex]

episode, on 12 December 2012 - 19:29, said:

So buy an external.

Or, not buy a laptop lacking the features I want.