Friday, June 14, 2019

Laptop Surgery

Oftentimes when a piece of technology breaks, people throw it away or never use it again. I've done this before, especially with old smartphones. While cleaning my room, I found an old laptop that I used in middle school. At the time I used it, around 2015, it was new. It's an Asus Transformer Book T1000 with a detachable keyboard. Perfectly usable today, albeit slightly slow. The screen is cracked in the corner, but the actual LCD panel functions properly. I realized that I had stopped using this laptop because the power button broke. It couldn't be turned on. I decided to take apart the Transformer Book the find the root of the problem. After removing the back plastic cover on the tablet portion, I located the circuit board for the power button. The internal button had snapped off, leaving only a metal contact on the board. With the cover off, I used my screwdriver to short the contact, resulting in the normal boot-up sequence. The power button board simply had a few screws to secure it and a standard ribbon cable to connect it to the motherboard. I searched eBay for a replacement power button board and found one for around $10. Once it arrived, the repair procedure was basic. Everything worked like new. As technology has become more advanced, it has also become less repairable. Companies like Apple have long restricted consumers from taking apart their devices for repair. The idea of planned obsolescence (tech intentionally made to require a replacement) has only spread. The tech industry, with many parallels to the automotive industry, isn't favoring the true enthusiast anymore. For example, if my laptop was a newer MacBook, it would've been a lot harder to find a power button module on eBay. To achieve a sleeker form factor, companies have opted to solder components directly to the motherboard and adopt proprietary designs. This recent trend is not only detrimental to the wallets of consumers in the case of a repair, but also to the environment. The life cycle of technology is decreasing, resulting in more waste. It's probably too late now, but tech companies should begin to support the tinkerer. 

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