Right to Repair

Mon Jan 20 2025 | 15 min read

Background

A while back, I was in San Francisco with my then-girlfriend for her Ph.D exit talk. I brought with me my trusty Thinkpad T430 that I've had since starting college in 2012. During my time as an undergraduate I had replaced the stock HDD with a much faster SSD, upgraded the RAM from the stock 4GB to 8GB, and switched to running Linux full-time. This laptop has served me well ever since, serving as my main machine for two computer science degrees, as well as my personal laptop afterwards (albeit somewhat underutilized due to having a work laptop for most of that time).

In the months leading up to this trip, I had noticed an issue with my laptop's left lid hinge that prevented the laptop from fully closing without partially separating the lid's plastic frame from the front bezel. I realized later that the support that connects the hinge to the lid's frame had broken, detaching from the hinge itself. This didn't affect the actual display so I mostly just dealt with it, resorting to banging the pieces back together with my fist after closing the lid in order to get everything flush again. This is a ThinkPad, after all; it can take a beating or two.

Because my girlfriend was busy preparing for her exit talk during the day, I found myself with lots of time to walk around the city. On one such walk I came upon a local computer repair store and decided to ask how much it would cost to repair my laptop. Imagine my surprise when I was told that it would cost over $200 plus the cost of replacement parts. The owner then turned his screen around to show me the parts in question, revealing that it was a $30 Amazon listing. That was the moment when I realized "I could definitely just do this myself". So I set out to do just that.

The Repair

After ordering the replacement lid and hinges off of Amazon, I checked YouTube for tutorials and found one that perfectly applied to my situation, as the showcased damage to the laptop was identical to my own situation. Performing the repair involved:

Removing the front bezel
Removing the keyboard, cover, and trackpad assembly
Removing the wires around the edge of the screen, as well as the webcam assembly

after which the hinge itself could be replaced, and the steps above undone in reverse order.

None of the process required any tools other than a screwdriver, and all the various pieces and panels clipped back into place without the need to glue anything in. I consider myself quite fortunate in this regard; many modern laptops suffer from an overuse of glue, components soldered directly onto the main board, and other obstacles that make disassembly and repair difficult or even outright impossible.

Up Next: Battery

By all accounts, the ThinkPad repair was a resounding success. I had successfully replaced the hinge for much less money than if I had taken it to a shop, and had learned a thing or two along the way as an added bonus. The rush when I clipped the last piece into place and realized I could finally open and close the lid properly was intoxicating, similar to the dopamine hit of buying a nice new product, except even better because it was an old product that I had made to feel new again by my own hand.

So I immediately set my sights on another repair that I had been dying to perform for some time now: replacing the aging battery. I was still rocking the original OEM 6-cell battery that came with the laptop back when I got it in 2012. In the decade of use since then, it had degraded significantly, and combined with my use of Linux (not exactly known for for its power efficiency), I struggled to get more than about 45 minutes of light use out of it, forcing me to keep it plugged in at all times.

While I had hoped that replacing the battery would be as simple as popping the back cover and swapping in a new one, there were a couple of thorny details I uncovered during my research:

Lenovo utilizes a battery whitelist in their battery management system, so the use of non-OEM batteries would require either flashing the embedded controller firmware with an alternative that would skip battery authentication checks, or buying third-party batteries that successfully trick such checks into accepting them
Lenovo no longer produces official batteries for this product line

This means that I would be forced to buy an aftermarket battery of questionable quality, and I would have to find one that had successfully reverse-engineered the OEM battery enough to be recognized as legitimate by the embedded firmware controller. After some deliberation I finally decided that this was too much uncertainty and that I would be better off finally replacing my laptop.

Dawn of the Framework Era

I did not make the decision to buy a new laptop lightly. Consumer electronics contribute an enormous amount of e-waste to landfills, polluting our environment with toxic metals and wasting precious nonrenewable resources. Rampant consumerism only accelerates this process, and one of the best ways we can slow the growth of e-waste is by using our electronics for as long as possible. I had tried to make my old ThinkPad last as long as possible, and as a result of my ability to open it up and replace some parts, I was able to stretch its lifetime to over a decade. Nevertheless, I decided it was finally time to invest in a new machine.

My experience with repairing my ThinkPad greatly influenced my priorities in selecting a new machine. Namely, I should have full control over both the hardware and the software, allowing me to use my machine as a tool as I see fit, rather than being subject to artificial limitations in repairability and extensibility.

I quickly settled on the Framework 13 AMD Ryzen 7040, as it checked all the right boxes for me:

Fully repairable, with virtually all hardware being replaceable
Excellent Linux support
Open-source embedded controller firmware

I also opted for the DIY edition that requires assembling the laptop, not just because it was cheaper but because it would give me a feel for just how repairable this laptop actually was. When it finally arrived and I started assembling it, I was blown away by just how easy it was to get parts into and out of this machine. Framework made several conscious decisions to make repair much easier than is typical, including but not limited to:

Using captive screws throughout
Making liberal use of magnets to clamp and align panels
Adding a finger wrap on the touchpad cable to ease installation
Adding high-quality labels (with QR codes) to every major component and slot
Including a combined screwdriver/spudger tool in the box

I could access and replace any internal component in a matter of minutes. For repairs that would require more advanced soldering work, Framework makes full schematics and assembly drawings available to repair shops. In addition, much of the Framework software stack is open-source, including their embedded controller firmware, which should help prevent any software lock issues around replacing the battery in the future.

The Importance of Fixing Your Own Stuff

My experience throughout this process, while enlightening and empowering, is far from typical in the consumer electronics space. Corporations have discovered that they can extract more profit from their customers through a variety of increasingly shady means, including but not limited to:

Designing products to be more difficult to upgrade, such as by soldering upgradable components like RAM and storage directly to a computer's mainboard, or by using industrial adhesives to glue components like batteries into place
Designing products with an artificially-low expected operating lifespan, often coinciding with the end of the manufacturer's warranty support (i.e. planned obsolescence)
Restricting access to first-party parts, tools, and documentation
Using software locks and device pairing to prevent the use of third-party parts that would otherwise work just fine
Requiring the use of the cloud for some devices to operate, and then shutting down the servers after a few years, leaving you with little more than a paper weight

There are countless examples of such practices happening in the real world:

Apple has historically been notorious for manufacturing laptops that make heavy use of soldered-on components and adhesives, preventing common upgrades such as adding more memory or storage, and instead forcing you to bring your laptop to an Apple store (or even to buy a new one entirely)
HP printers would display fake error messages when users attempted to use third-party ink cartridges
John Deere tractors enter a slow "limp" mode when some errors show up, forcing users to hire a John Deere technician to clear them out using special software

However, there is hope on the horizon. For example, Apple now has a self-service repair program that allows customers access to specialized tools for repairing their phones and laptops (though they still have yet to do away with parts pairing). The FTC has recently sued John Deere for monopolistic practices that drive up the time and cost of tractor repair. And companies like Framework have shown that it is possible to design and sell products with repairability in mind.

Ultimately, consumers will need to shift their perspective when it comes to their relationships with their products and their consumerist habits in general. We need to ensure that we utilize our products to their fullest extent, and become more comfortable with the idea of repairing what we already own, rather than defaulting to simply buying a new one. This in turn requires that the products themselves are designed to last and work for the user, and that we be in control of our technology and not the other way around. In our current capitalist system, that means voting with our wallets for products that we can truly own and that won't let us down with artificial limitations. Additionally, we should support legislation for enshrining the right to repair into law.