[jensv]

Bought a Surface Pro 5th generation. Less than 8 months later the battery barely holds a charge. (<5 minutes) You're basically stuck because everything is glued together so you don't have any options other than to buy a brand new device. Feels a little like the forced Windows 10 updates. Good luck running Linux unless you are willing to live with all kinds of fail, due to poor camera support.

In the end it was far easier to just switch over to a Thinkpad.

[no_wizard]

The one year warranty should have covered your surface

I do support right to repair for the record. I just think this isn’t a great example of how the right to repair would have actually helped someone

[giancarlostoro]

The thing being asked for with the right to repair and why these companies are against it is that devices arent so convoluted you cannot repair them. We would see bigger devices that can be repaired because not everything is soldered together. At least thats what I remember reading a year ago. It would force companies to redesign their devices. Which is sensibly why they are against it all.

[no_wizard]

IANL however my understanding of the legislation behind it boils down to:

Right to repair essentially boils down to the product needs to be repairable in a reproducible way. It doesn’t state how that repair needs to be done or what exactly that means.

The big one is for repair 𝙜𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 and 𝙖𝙫𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙖𝙞𝙧 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙨 is what is most important. So that a repair shop or savvy consumer could indeed do their repairs without push back from the manufacturer. It also means the specifications for those repairs and parts would be open(ish)

Having to openly document repair procedure and have open part availability is what I think wrongly companies are attempting to protect. Because third parties could manufacturer spec compliant parts that wouldn't void the overall warranty of a product

I think redesign is a non significant factor

EDIT: I just want to note that in the right to repair debate product lifecycle planned obelesance is actually a legitimate argument for right to repair. I don't think devices are built to live longer then a product generations lifecycle (for instance, an iPhone has a typical generation lifecycle of 3-5 years I believe)

Right to repair would reverse that trend at least somewhat

[close04]

Battery warranty is one of the more grey areas of warranty coverage. Depending on local legislation and the specific coverage for the model you can get 6-12 months (it's considered a consumable) and the warranty might start when the battery was manufactured rather than the sale date (like Dell did some years ago, not sure if it's still a practice).

[pbhjpbhj]

Consumables are readily replaced at low cost. Batteries (in phones/tablets) are essential central components.

If you need tools or instructions then the parts aren't really consumables.

[MereInterest]

Part of the issue is the trend of integrating parts that used to be easily replaceable. My first phone/laptop each had batteries that could be swapped in under 10 seconds with no tools. My latest do not.

[NullPrefix]

Whole device is a consumable. Six months of usage and off to a landfill it goes.

[no_wizard]

In my experience it's always tagged to the device at time of sale like any other warranty. Usually this comes into play if the device and the battery somehow have different warrantie.

However I am hardly an expert on this. I can speak to the surface though (we use them at work) and most definitely is covered