battery question
- Thread starter Rushino
- Start date
stupid joke...
Anyway you can call Microsoft to ask about it or ask at the Microsoft store, but they may not have a procedure yet. Maybe in 1 year when they actually start dying out then they will have an answer. As far as I know they have not addressed that issue yet.
J515OP
Super Moderator
It actually isn't meant to be a joke 
Unfortuantely that is the reality these days, devices are made to be disposable. You are not supposed to repair, upgrade or replace components. Everything is sealed (the Surface Pro just got a 1 out of 10 on repairability from ifixit Microsoft Surface Pro Teardown - Page 3 - iFixit) and made to not be accessible. This isn't just the Surface Pro, many current devices (laptops, tablets, phones) all rate low on repairability. If you are covered by warranty you simply return it. If not you buy a new one since the cost of repair is going to be a significant percent of a new item if you can find somebody to do it at all.
JP
Unfortuantely that is the reality these days, devices are made to be disposable. You are not supposed to repair, upgrade or replace components. Everything is sealed (the Surface Pro just got a 1 out of 10 on repairability from ifixit Microsoft Surface Pro Teardown - Page 3 - iFixit) and made to not be accessible. This isn't just the Surface Pro, many current devices (laptops, tablets, phones) all rate low on repairability. If you are covered by warranty you simply return it. If not you buy a new one since the cost of repair is going to be a significant percent of a new item if you can find somebody to do it at all.JP
Sorry I misunderstood you.
You are correct that this is the trend, but virtually all laptops have replaceable batteries and many have user upgradeable RAM and HDD/SSD. (though trying to replace a fan on a laptop once I had to disassemble literally everything to do so). You can have an iphone battery repaired at the store, but many people choose to get a new device because the battery magically dies at contract upgrade time (wink wink) and $100-200 for a new phone is a better deal. In the case of the Surface, the cost is so high that even if the repair costs $250 it may be worth paying depending on how much a new device costs when the battery dies. If Microsoft has addressed the issue I have not seen it, I think it is better to wait and see how they handle repairs before suggesting spending another $1000 is preferable to getting the machine repaired, it is just speculation at this point.
You are correct that this is the trend, but virtually all laptops have replaceable batteries and many have user upgradeable RAM and HDD/SSD. (though trying to replace a fan on a laptop once I had to disassemble literally everything to do so). You can have an iphone battery repaired at the store, but many people choose to get a new device because the battery magically dies at contract upgrade time (wink wink) and $100-200 for a new phone is a better deal. In the case of the Surface, the cost is so high that even if the repair costs $250 it may be worth paying depending on how much a new device costs when the battery dies. If Microsoft has addressed the issue I have not seen it, I think it is better to wait and see how they handle repairs before suggesting spending another $1000 is preferable to getting the machine repaired, it is just speculation at this point.
Russ
Active Member
Vook --
That is highly unlikely. Battery in my 2 1/2 year old laptop still running fine. Same with by iPad V1 and my iPhone 3GS. The newer batteries take a long time to actually die -- with die being defined as "no longer accept a charge." You will have long grown tired of it and moved on to something else before the battery dies.
Worry about something else.
Regards,
Russ
I'm not worried. But I would define die differently as holding significantly less capacity and/or dying quickly even on a "full" charge. I assume for the price it is a high-quality battery, but I think many users have had the experience of a Dell or some such crap PC that will no longer hold a charge after a year or two.
J515OP
Super Moderator
This is the other reason. Batteries have improved significantly and the life of the battery is expected to be longer than that of the device. Of course we all know somebody that is still using a Windows 95 machine or something like that, heck I even have an iPhone from the original launch day and the battery is fine the OS on the other hand was abandoned long ago, but they are not intended to go more than a couple of years. That is even more the case today.
You can't expect your $1000 to buy the same thing 2-3 years for now that it gets you now. You will get significantly more. For example, I bought a Nook Color at launch and it was considered an inexpensive tablet at $250 with 8GB memory, a single core 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM. Fast forward a year and a half and you could get the Nexus 7 for $199 with a 1.3Ghz quad core processor, 8GB (soon upgraded to 16GB) of storage and 1GB of RAM including stock Android without ROMing. At that point it would have made little sense to repair a Nook Color for what you could get the Nexus 7 for.
Almost no Apple (do any?) products come with replaceable batteries and most phones and tablets no longer do either. Some of it is manufacturing and cost and some of it is consumer driven. The price we pay for demanding small devices is less accessibility and repairability due to space considerations. I'm not saying it is right wrong or otherwise but it is the way that devices currently are for whatever the reasons.
J515OP
Super Moderator
If battery replacement is a concern you might want to check this out http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/surface-forum-site-news/2330-microsoft-s-surface-pro-tablet-have-half-battery-life-rt-just-4-hours.html#post8596. A cool option that was a response to a similar question I had
Another thing to consider, if the RT gets 9 hours from a charge and the Pro gets roughly half that, the life of the battery in the RT should be twice as long. It's quite possible that many people will run their Pro while the charger is connected, but this also can be damaging to these types of batteries, so I'm not sure doing this will significantly increase the lifespan of the battery.
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