Working on a Dell for a friend....

[schen]

I was clearly reminded last night, why it is that I settled on ThinkPads years ago while working on a Dell Inspiron 710m (newer version of the 700m) for a friend!

Let me start by saying that I've always liked this machine and had a different friend who bought one years ago when they came out originally. The form factor was nice; small, decently high resolution wide-screen LCD, relatively light with an onboard optical drive. This particular one apparently had something sticky spilled onto the side of it at some point and also had a little chip out of the corner of it from the palm rest bezel. So, all I was doing was cleaning up the spill (since it didn't really get inside the machine) and replacing the bezel with a nicer one.

HOLY SMOKE; do they not think through assembly/disassembly when they are engineering these things? Simply replacing that bezel required me to pull the screen along with all it's attendant wiring! While I was at it, I figured I'd switch the touchpad from the crached one to the "new" one since it was in nicer condition. I was surprised to find that the touchpad wasn't one assembly like on ThinkPads, but in 2 separate pieces which DID NOT include the buttons themselves! It turns out that those are semi-permanently attached to the bezel itself with melted-down abs studs.

In the end, I still like this little machine, but I sure don't like working on it much!

[Harryc]

Schen, that's why I laugh when people say that recent Thinkpads are junk and not engineered well. Those same folks have obviously never had one apart, or if they have had one apart, they've never had a Dell (or any other recent laptop) apart on a table in front of them to compare. On most Thinkpads I can recall having done it to, it takes 6 screws or less to change the Palm rest...5 minutes tops.

[emeraldgirl08]

I had a similar experience with my brothers Toshiba Satellite A75-S2112. It's an older Pentium 4 machine that had been overheating and shutting down on him. I suggested new thermal paste and cleaning the fan area. It took us all practically all evening disassembling the laptop. While the Thinkpads I've worked on require only removing the keyboard (three to four screws) and the keyboard bezel the Toshiba required removing the keyboard, the bezel, the screen.... you get the picture. We had to get all the way down to the motherboard which just exasperated me!

I think the only redeemable feature on his laptop is the Truebrite screen. Other than that it's like the comp engineers were not in their right state of mind while designing this thing lol

He had asked me since he knew I've disassembled Thinkpads many times if they were as difficult as this. I told him I could do the thermal compound in 10-15 minutes vs the 4 hours we spent just disassembling his!

I'm counting my blessings that my intuition paid off while selecting my very first laptop last year- a T30! It's been nothing but Thinkpads since then!

[schen]

I guess, I'm just spoiled now after working on TPs for 15 years or so or, maybe I just have blocked out memories of working in IT where I HAD to work on Dells, and Toshibas. I must say though that the Dell Latitudes were obviously designed to be easier to work on "in the field" (as far as I can remember anyway), but I just haven't come across ANYTHING where the design engineering has been so carefully thought out.

Based on what I know of their process, I believe that it can be attributed to the Yamato facility, although I'm sure that's simplifying it somewhat. In the end, it just seems to be top to bottom design philosophy that other manufacturers don't seem to be willing to adopt. I haven't worked on a Panasonic, so those might be built better.

[RealBlackStuff]

Reflects my sentiments: CMOS battery location on crappy Dell (UN)Inspiron 2650

[schen]

Reflects my sentiments: CMOS battery location on crappy Dell (UN)Inspiron 2650

I also worked on a Dell Inspiron 1000 (for the same friend, who bought it before I knew him) and I'm amazed at a machine that I have a lower opinion of! It's huge, and not in a A31, solid, full of important "stuff" feel, but more like the; I built this thing cheap, but put in a piece of metal to give it some weight feel! I figured I'd put some more RAM in it for him so it'd run better, but underneath the normal cover was.......ONE SOCKET! You can see where the other one should be, but; just not there!?! The battery was Nimh during the P4 (although it actual CPU was Celeron). We're talking a machine that's of the same vintage as a T40, so I'm mystified by this.

I'm really not trying bash on Dell per se, but just pointing out that it's obvious why the company makes lots of money and I switched my laptop users from Dell (or Toshiba) to ThinkPads at every place where I was in the decision maker. Although I must say that my current situation is very frustrating. I teach in a district where thankfully we are issued the R60 and R61, but they came so poorly spec'd that I find myself defending the ThnikPad brand constantly where other teachers complain about them. Lenovo, somehow decided that making the sale was more important than working with our folks to make certain that the CTO specs were reasonable. They were ordered with 512Mb of RAM, and 40Gb HDDs. So every time somebody tried to run WMP along with their Outlook client open, the machines lock up. So, most people think that ThinkPads are junk! Of course HP has the same black eye since that's what kind of desktops we have.

[ajkula66]

schen wrote:

I haven't worked on a Panasonic, so those might be built better.

You don't want to work on a Panasonic laptop ever, take it from someone who had several of them with their guts exposed...

Well-built they are. Complicated and often counter-intuitive as well.

On CF-Rx series, one has to take apart the entire machine (short of disassembling the LCD part) to swap the hard drive.

On CF-1x/2x/4x/5x you need special gel when swapping the hard drive, because it is used as a shock absorber...

Having said all of that, they're very impressive machines, but definitely a pain to work on.

Put it this way: whenever an "unknown" ThinkPad enters this house, it gets to meet my screwdriver set within an hour of its arrival...

We've owned a high-end, fairly recent (CF-52) ToughBook for several weeks now, and I haven't done anything to it after the initial setup...that's got to tell you something...

As for Dells, haven't touched any of them in years, and will do my best to keep it that way...

Good luck, old chum...

[j-dawg]

You people have obviously never worked on Macs. I recently got a pretty sweet 1.5GHz Powerbook G4 12" for the paltry sum of $20, though the screen was shattered. I purchased a new screen for $30. Installing it would be a breeze, I thought, based on my Thinkpad experience. NOPE. The only way to replace a screen on a Powerbook is to take the whole thing apart...completely. Motherboard, all five hundred little fiddly bits, etc, it all comes out to replace the screen. When removing the upper bezel, a few cables msut be disconnected from the motherboard...but if you pull on the wires instead of prying them out with a screwdriver, you will tear out the connectors on the motherboard and it will need resodlering or a new motherboard. There are at least seventy to a hundred screws, of ten or so different sizes.

Because of all this, disassembly takes about two to three hours the first time. And when you discover, after more hours of painstaking reassembly, that you did not correctly screw in the slot-loading DVD burner and can no longer remove DVDs...that's about when I was ready to give up on technology and move to northern Canada.

[dr_st]

The easiest laptop I've ever encountered as far as basic disassembly goes is my Compaq Evo N610c. It's an old business model by Compaq (before they were acquired by HP), contemporary of the T30, which shares remarkably many traits with Thinkpads.

Removable bay drive
Access hard drive: 1 screw
Access RAM: 0 screws, just unlatch a panel
Remove keyboard: 0-1 screws, 4 latches, 1 connector
Remove touchpad/buttons: 0 screws, one connector

Advanced disassembly seems more of a chore than on Thinkpads, though. I've never gotten that far.

[schen]

The easiest laptop I've ever encountered as far as basic disassembly goes is my Compaq Evo N610c. It's an old business model by Compaq (before they were acquired by HP), contemporary of the T30, which shares remarkably many traits with Thinkpads.

Back in those days, the nicer (business class probably) Compaqs were contracted from Arima vs. Compal, Quanta or some of the other Taiwanese manufacturers. My nephew worked for the Houston office of Arima supporting them and he told me that there was definitely quite a bit of difference between the contractors.

On the Mac front; yes, I have work on them, which is why I don't any more! The last thing I worked on was my brother-in-law's G4 "Titanium" PowerBook. I've always really admired them from a design standpoint, but just couldn't justify their additional costs "to be in the club". Then there's the other half of the equation; that a lot of the parts they need are "special", so they end up costing more as well. He gave me that G4 because it had a dead optical drive, an old/slow HDD and a broken screen hinge. 2 of the 3 parts would have been way more expensive than their ThinkPad equivalent and after it was all over, it would have still be a 500mhz G4! So I sold it for parts along with an old G4 desktop to help pay for other projects.

That's one of the things I've learned while working on various brands and models, which is: it just isn't worth-while to work on non-"enterprise" computers. Just looking on eBay clearly indicates this. It doesn't matter regarding brand, but when you are working on a model that sells as hundreds (if not thousands) at a time, vs. 1 or 2 at a time from Best Buy or Walmart, then 2/3 years later, the laws of supply and demand come into play when they hit the used market. A perfect example are the Dell Latitude D Series that's a corporate sales item vs. Inspirons. Same reason that the used T Series ThinkPads are such great deals. Corporations typically are on a 2 or 3 year cycle so a bunch of those are either being sold off or have come "off-lease" and sold they the leasing corp.

[mediasponge]

In shopping around for a new home office laptop for my wife (no rush yet), I was going to limit my search to models that have a full hardware service manual available on the web. If that's not available, the only alternative as far as she is concerned is an extended warranty with loaner replacement. The service manual requirement, if enforced, eliminates all the Japanese brands, all the Lenovo Ideapad models, and most of the domestic brands, except HP (Pavilion). As much as I hate to buy another HP after having her current one die on her 4 times I might have to because they are fairly straightforward to work on, parts are available, and full manuals are available. We are probably not going for a top-of-the-line business class model, so the field may be somewhat limited. Suggestions? (under $1000 USD, please)

Question: Which brands and models of current laptops do have full hardware service manuals available on the web? I only have these so far:

HP Pavilion (all?) (no Compaq)
Lenovo Thinkpad (Edge yes, any others?) (no Ideapad)

BTW, the trusty A31p is the backup machine when hers goes down, but it's next in line for repair at the moment...

[schen]

In shopping around for a new home office laptop for my wife (no rush yet), I was going to limit my search to models that have a full hardware service manual available on the web. If that's not available, the only alternative as far as she is concerned is an extended warranty with loaner replacement. The service manual requirement, if enforced, eliminates all the Japanese brands, all the Lenovo Ideapad models, and most of the domestic brands, except HP (Pavilion). As much as I hate to buy another HP after having her current one die on her 4 times I might have to because they are fairly straightforward to work on, parts are available, and full manuals are available. We are probably not going for a top-of-the-line business class model, so the field may be somewhat limited. Suggestions? (under $1000 USD, please)

Question: Which brands and models of current laptops do have full hardware service manuals available on the web? I only have these so far:

HP Pavilion (all?) (no Compaq)
Lenovo Thinkpad (Edge yes, any others?) (no Ideapad)

BTW, the trusty A31p is the backup machine when hers goes down, but it's next in line for repair at the moment...

I think I've seen some of the ThinkPad SL and even the T Series machines that fall into the sub-$1000 class. Although the SL is targeted at the "SOHO" market, the T has always been directed toward the "enterprise" segment.

[automobus]

Question: Which brands and models of current laptops do have full hardware service manuals available on the web?

Have you come across this page before? Tim’s laptop service manuals

Tim maintains a collection of every service manual he can find, including many that companies try to keep secret. But put simply, if you need service manuals, you should probably stick to the big names: Dell, HP, and ThinkPads.

[dr_st]

Have you come across this page before? Tim’s laptop service manuals

Wow, an amazing website!