Grumble grumble laptops

[Boss Llama]

This is more of a gripe than a question, but feel free to share your experiences.

I realize that laptops aren't meant to be user-serviced beyond a few basic peripherals, but the degree of non-serviceability can be quite ridiculous. It wouldn't be difficult to make an easily opened case, accessible parts, and to include a technical diagram somewhere in the materials, but they just don't.

For example, to remove the bad inverter on my gaming laptop, which is probably the most common problem in laptops beyond things like HDD or memory, I just had to remove 62 screws, pull out the HDD, DVD, and RAM, unplug and remove the keyboard, trackpad, and front cover, then unhook a significant amoung of the internal wiring, separate the upper and lower halves, and then detach the screen shroud with the help of a very sharp knife.

Now, none of that stuff up until the detachment of the screen shroud is actually necessary to remove an inverter, except for the fact that because of the design of the laptop, the shroud can't be removed without separating the halves, and doing that requires everything else I just listed. I know some laptops out there will be easier to deal with than mine, but I've now learned a valuable thing to consider when purchasing - whether or not a 5 minute job take 5 minutes, or 2 hours.

[E.T. EddieTorrez]

Well you're definately braver than I am. You seem to infer that maybe they could have designed it for a person to better work on the hardware. Do you think that it may have been designed that way to keep your fingers out?

[abiscuit]

I've had similar issues with the laptop I had. Aside from the memory or hard drive there's not much that you can easily get to. It makes a simple task like dusting out your laptop take much longer than it should. I also had this feeling I was going to break something every time I had to open my laptop for anything, fearing that I may have missed a screw or two required to open it.

Can't deny the convenience it was for when I was in school and traveling to Alaska back and forth on a regular basis though.

[One_Medic_Army]

I count myself lucky to have a large enough removable panel on the back of mine that I can get at both hard drives, the GPU, the CPU, the ram, the wireless card, and several other important bits.
I think I'd still never try and separate the halves, that's asking for trouble.