Comment by Spooky23
4 years ago
Be careful.
My dad replaced a defective memory chip on his IBM PC XT.. but the computer cost the equivalent of $12k.
I’d rather throw away a dozen modern laptops than fix one that costs 10x.
4 years ago
Be careful.
My dad replaced a defective memory chip on his IBM PC XT.. but the computer cost the equivalent of $12k.
I’d rather throw away a dozen modern laptops than fix one that costs 10x.
You can replace the memory and storage on just about every desktop computer today that isn't made by Apple, and a decent fraction of laptops.
They do not cost 10x as much as devices with soldered RAM and SSDs.
Your comparison does not work. Replaceable parts didn't make that IBM cost what it did.
I'm not talking about replacing a memory module. I'm talking about replacing a defective 4Kb memory chip on a $1000+, 384Kb ISA card.
When I built PCs in the late 90s, the BOM included motherboard, cpu, graphics card, sound card, nic, sometimes a parallel port board, memory, hard disk, etc. At this point, it was only really feasible to repair modules that failed, few humans with the skill to replace a component would do so due to the economies of scale and cheap price.
Now, it's motherboard, cpu, memory, disk. The cost is much less, but most repairs are replacements of the mainboard or disk.
For most laptops, there's a tiny motherboard with most of the functionality integrated into a few modules. The only things that get repaired are memory and battery.
For the M1 Macbook, you have one of the highest performance devices on the market selling for $899 at 40-50% margin. I just bought similar Dell and HP units in quantities over 50,000 last fall for $100-150 less (probably 6-8% margin to the OEM), with inferior battery life, disk and cpu.
You seem to believe this specific example where you are literally making up the non public profit margin proves that for the entire class of consumer laptops making non serviceable parts greatly decreases the cost. First it was an hyperbolic 10x and now it decreases costs by half. All examples are not only fictional misuse of both real and hypothetical numbers they say nothing much about the entire class of things.
The M1 is a fresh design on a new iteration of an arch by very smart people and its likely that there are far more factors at play than presence or absence of sockets in terms of determining profitability.
What we are trying to do is determine all things being equal how much cheaper can the same machine be with and without replaceable parts. I don't have any numbers either but I strong doubt its 2-10x cheaper.
Yes it did. Computers became cheaper because more and more functionality can simply be combined on single chips. You can not replace parts of broken chips at home.
Look into Apple's M1.
Average spend on a computer hasn't gone down recently. In the era when it actually did go down it was because volume and reliability went up, and cost of manufacturing went down as process improved.
Phones have been system on a chip since the dawn of the era of the smartphone and few computers are. The difference between repairable and not is the difference between glue and screws and sockets vs solder. You have basically misunderstood everything.
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I'd rather repair it myself, or be able to take it to someone local with particular expertise. What's important is that we have a choice!