[shawnb576]

Not having a replaceable battery is a real problem.

I have a circa 2018 Xps13 9370 that I’ve used regularly for non-work coding it generally still works great. Recently it was only lasting 60 minutes on a charge, but $50 to Amazon got me a new battery and now it’s great.

I don’t really need a new computer and the battery is the one thing that is sure to fail. The CPU and 16G memory are fine for Windows 11 and WSL2 (or Ubuntu).

It’s a waste to build machines that are designed to become trash, especially in todays world where hardware improvement curves have flattened so machines are usable for many years.

[winternett]

With all the talk about environmental conservation that we do, it's really important to talk about the damage companies are doing to our planet by making unreliable products in hopes of encouraging wasteful consumerism. I have bought dell computers for years, and while they are reliable for the most part, each model I've bought has has serious flaws that make most people dispose of the entire computer after 1-3 years of use. So many companies (especially cell phone makers) now put out models that fail or slow down after 1-3 years and this is creating a horrible amount of waste that contributes heavily to destruction of the environment in production and disposal, water pollution, and many other negative impacts of all of us financially.

Device failure often means lost photos, work, and vital documents, we rarely hear about the stories of this now because it's marked unpopular and downvoted by online algos. It's 2022 and we still don't have failproof hard drives, even though SSDs have been in place for many years now. Planned obsolescence, and product unreliability needs to have more serious consequences for large companies, especially the ones that have R&D units, it's really an ugly lie for modern devices to fail and have flaws as much as they do.

[rlpb]

What level of replaceable battery is acceptable? Like you, I have an XPS 9360 and I replaced the battery recently. I had to remove a bunch of screws and pry open the lid to do it. I don't particular mind this. I'd rather have a thinner laptop than some screwdriver-less battery swap mechanism that I'm only going to use every few years.

For me, the battery was replaceable and dealing with a screwdriver and opening spudgers every few years is fine.

[bmicraft]

To me any amount of non-security screws is fine as long as none of them are covered by a sticker, or worse a rubber pad that is sure to never stick again

[Ekaros]

Reasonable number of regular screws 4-8 seems fair. If the battery in normal use lasts appropriate time let's say 4-6 hours at minimum. Otherwise yes, it should be toolless and even somewhat swappable in hibernation.

[hakfoo]

I sort of resent when repairability is clearly being used as a gatekeeping feature. Only the premium model is designed to be servicable.

I had an old Thinkpad X230 Tablet where everything was behind clever individual covers, one screw each and flip open, and the battery just slid off the back.

I got a newer E585, and there's a single-piece back panel that requires removal of 8 captive screws and then pry it apart, and the battery's behind it with a direct tether to the mainboard, rather than any sort of "we thought you might want to carry a spare and swap them without doing major surgery" packaging.

This is a bigger, chunkier, clumsier machine in every way, so don't pull the "design" or "thinness" card on me.

[abdusco]

I tried 3 replacement batteries on my XPS13 (2016) before it started charging properly. It straight up refused to charge the first battery (power led flashes amber), stopped charging the second after a few days and required unplug&plug (which screwed up the chassis). I finally found one on Aliexpress that worked.

It was a horrible experience for me as a broke student going through all that trouble in a non-US country, with no way to actually purchase a genuine replacement.

[mikae1]

> Not having a replaceable battery is a real problem.

It's such a big problem—not only for the consumer, but also for the environment—that it shouldn't be legal.

[scarface74]

Who is throwing away perfectly good computers (or phones) instead of just paying to her them repaired?

[The_Colonel]

The problem is exacerbated by the insane charge management. By default, once the battery drops to 99% it will start charging. Keeping the battery at this charge level is harmful.

Dell provides a way to configure this, but who does that? By changing the default charge management, the battery life could be usable many years down the road. My 2015 XPS 13 battery still holds > 4 hours because of that.

[k8sToGo]

Honestly, the more and more things I have, the more annoyed I am by this. I just bought a cheapish foldable e-bike, but since it is some Chinese brand, I am pretty sure it will be just trash once I use up most of my batteries cycles. The same thing goes for my battery run drill etc.

Sure, I could open it up and probably replace the cells, but that is not really feasible for most people.

[filoleg]

Why would it be the case for your battery-run drill? Even the cheapest most basic battery-run drills that I managed to find at Home Depot had hot-swappable batteries.

I got a slightly-above-the-cheapest Ryu battery drill, and it came with 2 separate batteries and a charger for them (so that i can use one while the other is charging). Swapping the batteries is as easy as holding the eject button, detaching the battery (which is mounted externally to the bottom of the handle), and then sliding in the new battery until it clicks. If one of the batteries died due to used up battery cycles, you can just buy another battery for cheap.

[filoleg]

*small correction, it was a Ryobi drill, not Ryu.

[k8sToGo]

It isn't one of those with the big bulky battery. I bought this at a discounter (Aldi).

[dfadsadsf]

Cheapish ebikes often have standard batteries that you can buy on ali or some random website. Check what motor and controller you have and you should be able to find battery.

[ge96]

Must be lucky or not aware those replacement batteries are usually trash. It is what annoys me because I like buying old flagship laptops vs. brand new. But now I think I will start buying new laptops to avoid having to buy replacement batteries that probably have fake EEPROM values.