Discussion on:

Difficult-to-repair Surface Pro built more like an ultrabook than a tablet

Won't this device, like all other tablets with which I'm familiar, be exchanged instead of repaired? I'm on my 3rd replaced iPad. It seems obvious from the description that MS never intended the unit to be repaired in the field.

That's why it is classified as an hybrid device

...meant to be thrown away, rather than repaired?

The issue isn't so much how easily a product can be opened, but once it is, how easily the problem can be found and corrected.

Bill, I understand why you need to include the negative editorial but it seems to me they would carry more weight if the reviews came with "...what they could have done is...". You'd like them to use fewer screws. Why? What else should they have done without compromising some engineering or physical aspect of the device? They used too much glue. Why did the do that? What are the alternative?

Anyone can take a device to pieces and bemoan what they find. It seems to me the challenging but educational thing to do is is make reasoned recommendations.

Lot of screws, not easy to open, but.... I do not plan to repair the device, if damaged, I will use insurance or Squaretrade services. Easy.

Microsoft is making the best effort. Come on! this is a "tablet" with a core i5!, is a full operating system in your hand!

Yes, I see lot of screws and a really hard to open design. But perhaps all this is need it!

I'm a reasonably technical person, but I would no more open the tablet case up than pick a fight in a cowboy bar. I don't take apart my drills either. If it breaks, I do the most logical thing and send it off to be fixed. I would not take apart my iphone, or my Dell laptop because it would void my warranty first, and second, what would an average person like me do with the darn thing open? Re-solder something?

I agree with the other comments, be constructive, why focus a negative article on such an obscure reason to dislike a product.

This is a series of articles where Bill compares how easy it is to open and self-repair various devices for those that are interested. He is only comparing the Surface Pro to the others he's done. He's not saying you should open your device, void your warranty, worry about it, or anything like that.

Don't understand the purpose of this article apart from mislead people to think MS surface is not good enough. The bottom line is MS tablet beat any tablet in the market bar none. It can do anything all other tablets is capable of doing and has functions other tablet can not even dream of doing.
I wonder how many percentage of tablet users have tried reparing or opening their tablet and how it is a point of decision on which tablet to buy.
Can't remember any company in the past 8yrs i have worked for where the motherboad or component of a desktop or laptop is faulty and they wont rely on warranty and send it back. The most they do is either upgrade the memory.
I am not saying once in a while you get someone in the support department that want to take aprt a device.

Like most toys, they are not designed to be repaired by the user. When broken, discard and buy another one.

Maybe it is just less commonplace, but it really angers me to buy a device where I cannot replace the battery with a little effort once it is out of warranty. Mp3 players, phones, tablets, ereaders, it should not make a difference.
So far I have only owned devices which, while not always easy, have been possible to repair at home with a little patience. $80+ to replace a worn out battery you can purchase for $3 is ridiculous.
Teardowns like this do help some of us. I do not think he is trying to say don't buy one, just realize it may be dicey to do a simple repair on this when the warranty is up.

You've convinced me that I won't want to repair this device for people not even my own mother! I would love to see how compatible it is with running other operating systems, also how easy it would be to load up.

I feel like people don't use the full potential of MicroSD slots. Instead of paying the extra for the 128gb Surface Pro, why not by a good 64gb memory card on Amazon? I guessing you can then install some of your legacy apps straight to the memory card on the pro.

I'm not buying a Surface Pro because I already committed to the RT and I love windows running an arm based processor with the concomitant great battery life. Now Microsoft should allow users choose install location from the market place already.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing we get to read a lot of around here at ZDNet lately. A lot of complaints, not just about the Surface by any means, but little to no explanation of how you could improve upon things in a rational way that wouldnt skyrocket price or significantly compromise the design in some other important way.

Articles like this just reek of one of two possibilities. Either the writer dosnt care enough either way to properly inform readers if the product they are looking at has better alternatives to its design and for what reasons, as in how its done better on a very similar product elsewhere, or this is as good as it gets for this kind of product and the writer is just sour grapes over the product and has their own motives for being negative.

To illustrate the problem, here is how the article perhaps could have been written but wasnt, and as a result, we dont know much important about the actual findings of the writer:

To open the device, youll need to use a heat gun, hair dryer, or other method to heat the adhesive tape and release the panel. This is a slow, tedious process
And for all we know???.
Unfortunately, when trying to fit as much modern technology into a package this small there are not any better lightweight cost effective methods of sealing such a thing, so this is the best thing they could have done???.

But Microsoft went a little crazy with the screws. There are dozens of them???
And for all we know???
But once one really considers how the screw placements were decided, its pretty clear it was the right way to do things, and as we said, a lot better then glue..

Unfortunately, theres so much glue holding it (the battery)to the back cover, thats its difficult to remove.
And for all we know???
But this is the way things have to be done in this tight of quarters when you want a replaceable battery, and you also want a design thats better safe than sorry, again, well thought out???

But as Jason Hiner wrote in his TechRepublic review, the Surface Pro doesnt quite stand out enough at either function.(either a laptop or a tablet)
And for all we know???
But when you want a tablet that can actually perform much like a laptop, there is no other product on Earth that does it quite as well as a Surface pro, so despite its imperfections, for a product of its kind???its perfect as there is, and will probably be for some time.

Ummm???hold it a second, we do know the Surface Pro is the only tablet that performs like a laptop. As I said, its easy to leave things out when whats left out isnt what you want the public to think about.

Bill are you going to put it back together, and make it work ?.
I would like to know.

Well I'm not a tech and I won't be working on this,so I will be buying one with the best warranty they have. Thanks for sharing this with us

I'm with the other commenters. I'm a hardware engineer and my instincts are the same as yours - "let's see what makes this puppy tick". But home tinkering went out with 1960's Dodge Chargers.

I was a PC Support many years ago and I can't believe people still do there own repairs in this day and age. RYOD...Repair your own Device. Besides I don't belive ease of repair was even a design consideration.

IT shops would want to be able to repair vs. having to replace or return, especially if the device contained business or proprietary data and software. These devices should no more be considered disposable than desktops and laptops.

What relevance is a support techs opinion on a completed engineering design? What exactly are you trying to bring to the party?.........apart from destroying a perfectly good tablet and moaning that in your opinion it didn't fall apart as easy as you anticipated! Come on Bill surely you have better things to do than this.

I am one that by Job description does do repairs on desktop, notebook, and anything else that is presented to me.

They have no intention of allowing people to repair these things. It's not healthy to their business model, which revolves around selling as many as possible. So eliminate the ability to easily repair such items and force the market to buy new ones. They get to keep making money, and you get to keep losing it, be it through shoddy workmanship or designed obsolescence.

Tablets are toys. I'd never swap my desktop out for one of these pathetic novelty items.

Joey and Larm don't get it. MS isn't in the business of throwing away money and this will cost you eventually. As time goes on, you might be "slipped" a rebuilt instead of a new, and the used value of this unit, a year from now, will be next to nothing because of this. MS never intended to throw away equipment they had to spend money on in the first place. Bad units will not just "disappear" and they will have a cost attached to them. Expect requests for warranty repair to have a high "denied" rate and have MS claim abuse so they can charge you for repairs.