788
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
788 points (95.4% liked)
Technology
34988 readers
104 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Playing devil advocate here. I owned second hand entry level first-gen MacBook Pro Retina that I bought in 2014. Still using it as my main laptop up until 2021 when I gave it to my nieces. On paper, It doesn't have good repairability so-so specs, everything glued also, but it still working very well, battery still can last more than 4 hours, every apps still run reasonably smooth and dare I said fast.
On the other hand, my spouse bought a brand new ZenBook a year later, it has a bit better repairability, battery and ram are "easily" replaceable, and it have better specs, but the battery dies 3 years ago. Even when the battery still alive, the laptop is very unoptimized causing the fan ran all the time, consuming more electricity, and over time it becomes very sluggish. So now, it's been hiding under closet now since maybe 4 years ago.
So I asked, what the use of repairability if at the end the component break easily. Sure you can replace it, but it just going to create more trash at the end. It's also unoptimized so it use more energy. I take one hardened optimized laptop that can last longer versus one that can be user repairable easily but unoptimized, energy hungry, and easily break component.
The issue lies in assuming that repairable laptops cannot be optimized to the same extent as MacBooks. However, this assumption is inaccurate. While there might have been a problem with your Asus ZenBook, I can assure you that if you were to select a Windows laptop priced similarly to a MacBook, you would find a comparable level of optimization. Additionally, there's the added benefit that you can swap out the battery when it starts going bad and upgrade the RAM and storage if you need to in the future
So you're drawing the conclusion that a more repairable device is inherently going to be worse than a less repairable device but that's not true.
A sample size of two is hardly statistically relevant. Especially because you're completely discounting the possibility that you were unusually lucky with your Mac or unusually unlucky with the Zenbook.
Gluing the battery in, in no way makes it last longer. The biggest problem here seems to be that the fan profile is not optimised, but that won't have a significant effect on the battery because while it increases charge discharge cycles, it doesn't increase them by that much. You probably just had a dud battery.