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Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

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Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#91
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of other ones will gladly sell compatible ones.

Buying 3rd party batteries is a nightmare, you never know what you are going to get.

Get it from known shops, and it is better than nothing at all.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#92
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still getting updates for my OG Gen 1 Lenovo X1 Carbon from 2012... i7/8/256 config. It still works too, solid as.

Firmware updates?

Last BIOS and core chipset for my Type 34xx class X1 Carbon was September 2019, but they are still providing critical updates with eg both power and battery drivers + device diagnostics as recent as 5 days ago. This is through Lenovo Vantage.

Hardware works great still, thanks to my picking the top model then. Only the battery is pretty average, but you'd expect that. I'm going to say this is good support.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#94
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even buying new you're often far better off buying a low-spec device and upgrading it than buying a laptop with the specs you want.

True for individuals who are unable to value their time, but I doubt you'd find an IT industry professional who agreed. You buy the machine with the support contract and you get the supported parts and you don't touch them. Modern designs don't even have replaceable RAM, for good reasons and not as some kind of conspiracy.

> True for individuals who are unable to value their time, but I doubt you'd find an IT industry professional who agreed.

Sure, if you value your time at hundreds of dollars for a 10min job. But most people would probably just call that delusional.

> Modern designs don't even have replaceable RAM, for good reasons and not as some kind of conspiracy.

Feel free to state them then. Because as a customer the most generous possible interpretation I can see would be that all manufacturers got a sudden bout of anorexia.

Re: Design quirks, limited parts, and other ways Chromebooks frustrate repairs

#95
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a chromebook in 2017 that I love. AUE is up in a few months. The OS has improved leaps and bounds since I got it. I wish it would keep getting updates. Sadly it’s hard to flash a new boot loader as the write protect screw is in a difficult place and I’ll likely break something trying to get to it. I don’t know what I’ll do when AUE hits. I guess it’ll be like my first gen iPad which I’m forced to use as a cl…

You should be able to disable write protection on the firmware flash using a suzyq cable to enable closed case debugging as well, and from there disable write protection. The screw is not the only way

Thank you! I’ll have to look into this approach.
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